Designer Spotlight with Paige Evans: Tonya Dirk

Another Wednesday means another Designer Spotlight with Paige Evans – today I’m featuring the talented Tonya Dirk!

Name: Tonya Dirk
Location: Portland, OR
Blog: creativit-tonya.blogspot.com
Instagram: @tonyadirk
Pinterest: @tonyadirk
Facebook: Tonya.Dirk
Etsy: Tonya Dirk

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started crafting: I married my high school sweetheart 22 years ago. We’ve since had four children; three boys and a girl. I worked as a registered nurse for 13 years before we decided that my staying home and taking care of the kids would be best for our family. We make our home in Portland, Oregon and spend a lot of time in Central Oregon where we have a little cabin near a big lake. I’ve always loved to do anything artsy and my true love is watercolor painting. I had to put painting aside while the kids were little and that was when I really got into scrapbooking and cardmaking.

Favorite thing to create: Right now for me it is all about cards. Shelf space has become very limited and photo albums are taking up way too much real estate. I love that cards can be shared and given to others.

What do you love about scrapbooking/cardmaking? I love that it helps feed that creative desire as well as documents all of life’s little details.

5 fun facts about yourself:
1. I played Division 1 college volleyball (and no I’m not tall… just shy of a whopping 5’3”)
2. I started playing tennis a couple of years ago and am a wee bit obsessed with it.
3. I can make my hands literally drip with sweat just by thinking about it (only takes about one minute… still trying to find the benefit of this!)
4. At our high school winter formal I was the queen for about 5 minutes. Then they realized that Santa Claus had placed the crown on the wrong candidates head. I was immediately de-throned.
5. I love to garden; flowers and vegetables.

Here is the fabulous layout Tonya made for her feature:

LIFE IS A JOURNEY by Tonya Dirk

I’ve done a couple of different layouts with this little curve feature at the top. I really like the visual interest that it adds and I have found so many different ways to embellish that area. This time I opted for some hand stitching for the plane contrail and then embellished that with some fun enamel shapes.

Here are four of Tonya’s favorite creations:

OUR #4 by Tonya Dirk

I love bright colors and stitching. This layout is the perfect example of that!

LET IT SNOW CARD by Tonya Dirk

This card just screams “me”. I’m a huge fan of glitter, rainbows, and hand stitching. I also really enjoy using die cuts and finding different ways to alter them.

SMILING CARD by Tonya Dirk

As mentioned, my first love is watercolor painting. So, you can only imagine how happy this whole new watercolor trend on scrapbook pages and cards has made me!

“N” FRAME by Tonya Dirk

If you were to walk through my house you would notice that I like to incorporate some home made décor. This is a piece that I did for my daughter’s room. I cut the large ’N’ out with my Silhouette and then backed it with all of the different pieces of patterned paper which I made using a hexagon metal die.

Thanks so much Tonya for being here today and sharing your projects with us!