CEDT - Meet Cathi O'Neill

Creative Expressions Design Team - Meet the Team

Name: Cathi O'Neill

Here is a photo of one of the projects Cathi submitted to us as part of her CEDT application:-

About Cathi:-

Introduce yourself briefly... I am so excited to be designing for Creative Expressions! My name is Cathi O'Neill, I am an American who married an Irishman and I have been living in Ireland since 1997. I live in a beautiful village on the Shannon River with my DH of 18 years (wow, that makes me feel old!) and my two beautiful daughters, Aine (onya) 10 and Aisling (ashling) 9 who are the subject of many of my projects!!

I have always love crafting since I was a little girl. My grandmother taught me to knit and crochet and I remember sewing Barbie doll clothes with her on her front porch! I am a knitter and quilter as well, but have recently in the last two years found stamping, card making and scrap booking, and an obsession was born!! I truly love creating and make vintage cards to sell here in our local village cafe as well as stacks of mixed media and shabby/vintage style layouts to keep and share with family! I also love to do canvases, tags, ATCs and altered projects, barely a day goes by when I haven't done something crafty!!

I am currently on the design teams for several manufacturers: Couture Creations, Molossi Chipboard, Paper Wings Productions, Tresors de Luxe Etsy Lace Shop, Visible Image stamps and Paper Temptress speciality card stock store. I also design for challenge blogs Scrap Africa, Frosted Designs and Sugar Creek Hollow, and have guest designed for challenge blogs Keeping the Best and Scrap it with a Song, C'est Magnifique Kit Club, Scraps of Elegance Kit Club and Crop Stop online store. I truly enjoy the challenge and inspiration that paper crafting bring me.

How did you get into crafting? I have always crafted since I was young, but I found paper crafting when I was home recuperating from surgery and off my feet for six weeks. I had just received a Silhouette cutter to make some vinyl wall decals when I realized it would cut paper too… I started with my children’s glue stick and some basic card die cuts, then an obsession was born!! I spent those weeks recuperating watching videos on card making and then found some shops to buy some stamps and inks and away I went! My quilting and knitting filled studio had to make way for inks, mists, flowers, papers…

How would you describe your style? My style is constantly evolving, but I have always had a strong pull towards vintage and grunge and sometimes shabby chic. As I have gotten more into stamping and inking, my style is evolving again to include a lot of mixed media.

Where do you draw inspiration from? I find inspiration everywhere, from other talented crafters, from my gorgeous place I live but especially from my little girls!!

What’s your favourite technique right now? I have been using a lot of mixed media lately, so I would say right now my favourite techniques are just adding a lot of stamping, mists, modelling paste and masking to my projects!

What’s your favourite colour? My favourite colour combination is teal and brown, but I have a love of purple too!!

What do you like to snack on whilst crafting? I am back into weight loss right now, so I am trying to be good…generally I just have a water bottle near my craft space!

What do you do when you’re not crafting? I run around as mom taxi for my children, swim, meet up with friends…

Tell us a random fact about yourself... At 23 I travelled alone from England to Egypt visiting Eastern Europe, Turkey and Israel along the way…an amazing trip where I saw amazing things and met some wonderful people.

What craft tool couldn't you live without? I have so many tools I use it is hard to narrow it! I guess it would be my Big Shot and Dies! But I use Walnut Stain Distress Ink an awful lot on my paper edges too, lol!!

If your house was on fire, what’s the first thing you would save from your craft room?

Aside from the layouts of my girls, I think it would have to be my awesome spinning ink pad holder, I have all the Tim Holtz Distress Inks and Re inkers (I am a bit of a collector!!)

If you want to see more of Cathi's creative projects, then visit her blog and FOLLOW HER at http://celticknotted.blogspot.co.uk/

Welcome to the team Cathi!!! Can't wait to see what amazing creations you have up your sleeve for us!!!