The Design Team
Kristin Batsel, Georgia, USA
I majored in art in college, and worked for a few years as a package designer and then a freelance artist before leaving the workforce to raise my two daughters. I enjoy mixed media art, mostly using ephemera, paints and various rubber stamps.
I have an obscenely large collection of old tickets, postage stamps, Chinese fortunes and old thrift store books that I cut up and use in my art. Some of my favorite things to make include ATCs, inchies, and tip in and chunky book pages. I also love book binding and altering Altoid tins.
I have been an active member of Craftster.org for the last three years and currently moderate the ATC and the Paper Crafts boards in addition to the Swap board.
Kristin’s Gallery
Teri Calia, California, USA
Many of you know me as the reigning Customer Service Goddess of Alpha Stamps, but in real life I am a freelance illustrator. I specialize in drawing animals and I am especially fond of cats. For fun and as a great stress reliever, I create art every chance I get!
I love mixed media and collage, acrylic paint, drawing, Photoshop, and hoarding art supplies and ephemera. My latest obsession is making jewelry. I have a BA in Fine Art and I’ve been creating art for as long as I remember. One of my biggest influences is my seamstress Mother who always says “there’s no such thing as can’t!”
Teri’s Gallery
Nicole Merkens, Georgia, USA
I am a mixed media artist, born where the winds blow and the flowers grow, wearing black eyeliner.
I grew up loving the unexplained and spoke to beings not there.
My explorations took me to Philadelphia where I earned a BFA in Printmaking/Bookarts. I traveled far and wide to learn all I could about other cultures and sacred spaces. For the past decade, my soul has been making appearances in galleries and museums nationwide.
When my feet hurt from journeying, you can find me working in my studio; making jewelry and found object sculptures or designing for the Print/Web industry which has been good to me for the past 13 years.
If I wasn’t a designer, I’d own a ranch with my husband in Colorado, drive a purple jeep and have a mutt named “El Cid.” I’m obsessed with birds and junk. To see more of my work, please visit my Web site.
Nicole’s Gallery
Frieda Oxenham, Scotland, United Kingdom
I come from a slightly different background than most stampers/mixed media artists in that I started off as a quilter and embroiderer and I have been very successful in that field. My quilts have won many prizes and are regularly exhibited here in the U.K. as well as in the US and other countries.
I started my adventure in mixed media in 2004 when I entered the exciting world of ATCs. Two of my ATCs, combining stitch, fabric and stamping, were published in the British Craft Stamper magazine. I’ve written many articles, mostly about quilting and embroidery, but also about ATCs and other mixed media techniques in British magazines such as Stitch, Classic Stitches, Patchwork & Quilting and Popular Patchwork.
Three of my pieces have been published in Somerset Studio and Somerset Gallery (La Bella Vita, Poivoir de l’Image and On the Wings of Time) and another piece (Dans mon Coeur) will be in the new Sew Somerset magazine. Here I found a way to combine vellum and transparencies in my fabric work which I very much enjoyed. This can also be seen on the Alpha Stamps postcards I submitted for a recent swap.
My favourite new technique is making fabric/paper collages that I used for the postcard backgrounds and lately I’ve started to stamp the fabric background I use as well as adding stamping on top. This is something I’m hoping to develop further in the near future.
Frieda’s Gallery
Barbe Saint John, California, USA
I am a mixed media collage artist, working primarily in jewelry and assemblage. I love creating and learning new skills. I’ve done everything from altered books, art dolls, spinning yarn, silk screening, crochet, resin, sewing, ATCs, metalwork, and collage. I work primarily with found objects and vintage items, incorporating tiny snippets of their history into new stories. I don’t have a favorite medium because I love them all.
I live in San Francisco, CA, and while I spend the majority of my time making art, I am also a Tui Na Therapist. I sell my work at local art & craft fairs and I’m looking into teaching online classes soon. To see more of my work, please visit my Web site, New Treasures from Forgotten Artifacts, and to learn more about me please visit my blog.
Barbe’s Gallery
Sharon Walworth, Rhode Island, USA
I am a latecomer to the world of art. My early love of reading edged out other interests, and my years as an English teacher involved grading papers rather than creating art. A longtime sewer, I moved in the 1990’s from garment making to quilting. Then - just over a year ago - I discovered mixed media collage, and especially enjoy producing miniatures such as quilties, inchies, and ATCs. But whether working with paper or fabric, I look for ways to use my sewing machines.
Fabric will always be central in my work. In my home, an enormous stash of fabric fills closets and basement tubs, and a growing stash of collage papers is treated as an extension of fabric. But that is just the beginning: shoe boxes, zip bags, glass jars, old baskets, aging tins and orphaned drawers overflow with lace scraps, beads, buttons, broken jewelry, little wheels off things long gone, faded family photos and old postcards whispering ghostly messages. Any one of these could be inspiration or embellishment.
Once, visiting Athens, I experienced the sensation of walking through layers of time, with the dust of marble ruins hanging in the air around modern kiosks and taxi stands. Today, I dream of using my fabric and collected “stuff” to achieve a similar layered feeling in my work.
Sharon’s Gallery
Sarah Whitmire, Florida, USA
As a mixed-media artist and instructor, I enjoy working in many mediums, including but not limited to encaustics, collage, and acrylics. Though I live and work in a smallish town in northern Florida, I enjoy using the internet to reach a much larger audience. I currently teach online workshops through Joggles as well as through my own blog and Yahoo groups.
My proudest achievement to date is the creation and founding of Soul Journaling, a series of guided, mixed-media visual journaling workshops that has inspired a growing community of people from all walks of life and from all over the globe to come together through art and self-expression. My work has been featured in some of my favorite magazines; Somerset Studio, Somerset Studio Gallery, Somerset Home, and Cloth Paper Scissors, and I am a member of several organizations, including the Gainesville Fine Art Association, the North Florida Craft Revolution and the Florida Etsy Street Team.
I look forward to continuing my partnership with Alpha Stamps and my Fellow Design Team members. Through this partnership I hope to grow as an artist, make lasting friendships, and inspire the love of art and creativity in others.
To learn more about my art and life, visit my blog.