Designer Spotlight with Paige Evans: Pol Prince

Pol Prince has such a lovely scrapbooking style and a knack for hand stitching and I am delighted to introduce her to you today!

Name: Pol Prince
Location: Cheshire, England
Blog: polprince.blogspot.com
Instagram: @polprince
Facebook: pol.prince

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started crafting: I’m 38 years old and I live in the beautiful county of Cheshire in England. I’m mum to three amazing children aged 17, 14, and 7. My family lives close by and are my everything. I’m a part-time childminder and spend the rest of my time either being mums taxi and driving my kids around or scrapping! I’ve been creative all my life but it was only after I had my youngest son and I was diagnosed with PND that I realised my creativity had fallen by the wayside somewhere along the journey of motherhood. I started going to a PND support group at my local SureStart centre, where a lovely lady did a session on cardmaking and scrapbooking. I was instantly hooked and started making cards then very quickly decided to try scrapbooking. I loved it straightaway! I’ve recently joined the Paper Issues Design Team and I’m in my element, I feel so thankful to be doing something I love every day.

Favourite thing to create: Definitely 12×12 pages, although I have done several altered frames as presents and I also enjoy papercutting, which make excellent presents too!

What do you love about this hobby? Ohh, where to start?! I do like the memory keeping aspect of scrapbooking, I like to think my children and grandchildren etc., will enjoy looking back on the photos and also learning a bit about me and our family life. I used to hate journaling on layouts in my own handwriting, I felt it wasn’t neat enough. Then I realised how much I’d love to look back at my mum’s or grandma’s handwriting so now I try to hand write as much possible if it fits in with a page. What I really love though is that when I’m scrapbooking I’m in MY happy place. I love to let my creativity out and even when I’m doing something else I’m always planning my next layout and there’s always ideas whirling round my head. Scrapbooking keeps me happy and chilled out, a necessity with 2 teenagers! Last but not least I love the online scrapbooking community. I’ve met and spoken to so many lovely people who I wouldn’t normally have and generally the scrapping community is so helpful, kind, and encouraging.

5 fun facts about yourself:
1. I absolutely love reading. Books were my first love! When I was a young child my mum became concerned that I was in the house too much and wasn’t getting enough fresh air. “Go and play outside” she’d tell me. Off I’d go, trot to the end of the path, then pull my book out from up my jumper and settle down to read outside!
2. Pancakes are my favourite food.
3. My dream holiday is to visit the New England area in the USA in autumn. Its my favourite time of year, the colours are just stunning.
4. The first car I owned was a 26 year old Citroen that I named Edith.
5. I possess a rare talent for being so rubbish at cooking I can burn pasta, despite gaining a Distinction in Hotel and Catering Management at college.

Here is the LOVELY layout Pol made for her spotlight!:

HELLO LOVELY by Pol Prince

I used 1canoe2’s Hazelwood collection and as soon as I saw the butterfly paper I knew I wanted to fussy cut it. I love hand sewing on layouts and have become adept at converting cut files to stitching templates on my Silhouette Cameo. I converted this file from the Silhouette Design Store and hand stitched it. The butterflies matched perfectly.

CHERISH by Pol Prince

I wanted to do a page to document my lovely mum, so this page was predominately journaling, which  did using the sketch pen in my Cameo. The pretty delicate florals in the Heidi Swapp September Skies collection perfectly matched my photo and gave the strong yet beautiful impression I wanted to represent my mum.

EYELINER by Pol Prince

I really enjoyed creating this messy, inky background with stamps and stencils. It’s not my usual style but it seemed perfect for this photo of my gorgeous daughter. I’m so jealous of her eyeliner skills!

WE ARE THE DREAMERS OF DREAMS by Pol Prince

I created this page not long after Roald Dahl had passed away. His books had such an impact on me as a child that I wanted to somehow commemorate him and this quote from ‘Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory’ which is one of my favourites. It also represents something I’m always telling my daughter – ‘you can be anything you dream you can be’. I made this page with my favourite papers from the Paige Evans Take Me Away collection. I adored the fussy cut flowers and the beautiful colours of the background paper.

GOODBYE SUMMER by Pol Prince

I love this huge ombre title and the colour complements the autumn photo sublimely. I take hundreds of colourful tree photos in autumn and this one was one of my favourites. The Robert Frost poem on the layout is one I absolutely love, it gives me goosebumps, and it describes autumn wonderfully. I used the Maggie Holmes Gather collection and some Freckled Fawn leaves.

Hope you are having a wonderful week so far and enjoyed learning more about and seeing Pol’s creations!