Kate Hadfield lives in Cheshire with her husband and two small children and is an avid digital scrapbooker.  Originally a cardmaker, she stumbled across a digital scrapping website by accident in early 2006 and was instantly hooked!  “Digital scrapping is the perfect creative outlet for me as it brings together all the favourite parts of my other hobbies in one!  I love to scrap the everyday moments of my children’s lives, the little things that might otherwise be forgotten”. Kate is on the Creative Team for a number of leading digital designers, is a regular contributor to UK Scrapbooking magazines and also serves on the Creative Team for Digital Artist Magazine. She also designs her own range of digital scrapbooking elements and doodles.

How did you get started?
I’ve always been arty and enjoyed drawing and all sorts of crafts. I took a number of fine arts courses during my 20s and then gravitated more towards textiles and crafts, trying out various different techniques and crafts. I was in a card making phase when I stumbled across www.scrapbookbytes.com  (http://www.scrapbookbytes.com) by accident one day and discovered the magical world of digital scrapbooking!  I downloaded my first free kit, started playing around with PhotoShop and instantly knew  that this was something that could take over my life!

How would you describe your style?
As a scrapbooker, I’d say my style is messy and colourful.  Someone once described one of my layouts as “beautifully controlled chaos” and I thought that was a wonderfully flattering description! I love elements,
embellishments, doodles and alphas and use a lot of them on my pages, usually with only one sheet of paper. I’m drawn to bright colour and usually make multiphoto pages (which has more to do with my lack
of photography skills and inability to capture one “great” shot than anything else I think!) The same style applies to my digital designs too, I like colour and rather than making full co-ordinating kits I enjoy making little extras for people to add to their pages (such as doodles, buttons and flowers).

What are your influences?
Most definitely my children – in terms of subject matter for my pages and inspiration for my designs.  Interesting colour combinations and patterns inspire me too, ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere really. I still have my student sketchbooks so when I’m stuck I often flick through those for ideas.

Who do you admire most in the crafting industry?
There are a lot of digital designers I admire greatly, notably Gina Miller and Natalie Braxton both for their designs but also for their generosity and ability to seamlessly blend a family life with a designing one!

Are any of your family crafty?
Yes, quite a few of the women in my family have an interest in needlecraft in particular, my Grandmother is still weaving and creating tapestries in her late 80s!

What’s the one piece of crafting equipment you couldn’t live without?
Adobe Photoshop. And my scanner. I know technically that’s two but they go hand in hand, they are the essential tools of my trade.

What is your favourite colour scheme to work with?
I gravitate towards the same colours a lot, usually a combination of hot pink, turquoise, lime and orange. I also seem to be using black backgrounds a lot at the moment, to really help to make the colours “pop”.

What was your biggest creative disaster?
Oh good grief, there are too many to mention…  And they usually involve me trying to use watercolour paints and making a complete and utter mess of it, although I did once manage to dye about half of my mother’s kitchen when I knocked over a pan full of hot dye.  In terms of scrapbooking, the beauty of digital is that every mistake can be deleted before it becomes a full blown disaster, so I’ve managed to get off lightly in that department!

What are you proudest of? What was your proudest moment?
Oh wow, that’s a difficult one. Probably being asked to write the digital column in Creative Scrapbooking
magazine when I had only been scrapping for a few months. For weeks I was convinced it was a joke!

What is your favourite crafting technique?
In terms of scrapbooking, my favourite part of creating a layout is adding the shadows and just watching
the page come to life.  In “real” (!) crafting I enjoy pretty much anything that gets paint or ink on my hands, I’m always blending things with my fingers and experimenting. Or “getting in a mess” as it is otherwise known!

Tags | Adobe Photoshop, buttons, cardmaker, Creative Scrapbooking magazine, Digital Arts magazine, digital scrapping, doodles, flowers, Gina Miller, Kate Hadfield, layouts, Natalie Braxton, photography, photoshop, scanner, scrapbooker, tapestry, watercolour paints, weaving