Member Spotlight | Emma Wood

This month, get to know Studio Calico member Emma Wood (emma_kw). Emma hails from Victoria, Australia, where she shares a newly-renovated home with her 8-year-old son Zackery. She started scrapbooking more than three years ago, and her style has developed and changed over the course of the three years. Learn more about Emma below!

Hi, I’m Emma! I live in country Victoria, Australia. I’m mum to Zackery, my one and only, who’s 8. We share our home (which we just finished renovating earlier this year, what an adventure that was...) with my parents and I am so incredibly thankful to have them around to help me with Zack as I work full-time and sometimes it can mean long days.


I started scrapbooking in early 2012 - I can’t remember what sparked that initial interest (for someone who scrapbooks and “records memories,” I have such a bad memory). All I know is I was in the supermarket, looking through the magazines and I saw a scrapbooking magazine. It looked interesting so it came home with me and that was all it took! The next morning I was straight down to the local craft store and I walked out with containers full of “stuff." I still have that magazine as it inspired my first page (imagine LOTS of pattern paper, mostly brown/maroon shades (??!!), distressed edges and blended inks…not so pretty.) And as I'm sure you know, once you get the bug for scrapbooking, it's hard to stop. My style has changed over the years (thankfully a lot since that first page, ha!) and I still have a long way to go - you never stop learning with this craft!

In 2013 I happily leaped onto the Project Life® bandwagon. Unfortunately, this meant the scrapbooking pages dwindled a little but I really loved recording those years in that format. After two years of working on 2 (12x12) pages on a weekly basis I was feeling a little worn out so I cut it down to 1 (12x12) page per week in 2014 and noticed I had more time for layouts again. However, this year for my Project Life, I’ve gone even smaller in 6x8 and no set timing – pages are put together in whatever way I feel like doing at the time so some months are three pages and others have 10. It’s working OK – I’m not as consistent as I used to be. I tend to work best with structure and routine, so having a set week per page was easier for me to manage – the freedom to do whatever I like, whenever I like means I get lazy and just don’t do it. Ha!

One of the biggest changes for my scrappy style has been changing from 12x12 pages down to 6x8 handbook-sized. I absolutely love the smaller size! It can be tricky because everything needs to be on a smaller scale (so some big embellishments just won’t work) but it really works for me.

SC Member since:

June 2012

All-time favorite past kit or collection:

That’s a hard one, I have a few but the one that pops into my head immediately is Hello, Hello. I have a crazy love of that kit; I clearly remember it being so much fun to use! Guess that would make it my all-time favourite, although I really love Far, Far Away and Sugar Rush too!

What do you do when your kit comes?

I don’t get to unpack my kits until the evenings when I get home from work, and I TRY to wait until Zack is in bed, but sometimes I can’t help myself. I like to take everything out and spread it out over my desk so I can get a feel for everything. Because it’s usually late, more often than not I leave everything spread out over my desk until I get back home the following night – then I actually take everything out of the packets, put all the smaller embellishments into bowls and place it all on a timber tray I picked up from Ikea (fits everything and so handy to put in the Alex drawers when I want to "tidy" up!). I’m very much a visual scrapbooker so if I can’t see things then chances are, I won’t use it. Taking everything out of the packaging and sitting it in bowls makes it easier to see what I have and make sure I use them!

What's your go to technique?

I’m not sure I have a go to technique for every layout; I guess I almost always have machine stitching on my pages – they feel naked without it. I love grids too, so I tend to fall back on those a bit also.

Share your top 5 products :

  1. White cardstock. This is absolutely necessary for me – turns out, I’m not so good at pattern paper backgrounds :) Trying to work on that.
  2. SC kits, obviously!
  3. Mini stapler
  4. Tags
  5. Enamel shapes, followed closely by puffy stickers at the moment (they’re so fun!).
  6. I know it said list only 5 but I love lists and can never stop...metal dies! This is a new one for me as I have the Cameo but I've just discovered I love metal dies. Isn't that crazy?! Never thought I'd have a use for the BigShot (picked it up for letterpress), but I really like the metal dies better than using the cameo. Who would have thought! Just wish the wallet would let me buy them more often. ;)

Where do you go when your mojo is low?

Both the member and design team galleries here. There is ALWAYS so much inspiration to be found. I can easily lose a couple hours scrolling through the gallery...it’s almost as bad as Pinterest, which is my other source of inspiration. That site just sucks the time away (add in a coffee or two and I can be lost looking at things for houuuuuuuurs.)


Thank you for letting us spotlight you, Emma! We loved getting to know more about you! If you'd like to see more of her work, be sure to follow her here at SC and on her Instagram!

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13 comments

  1. Carson says…
    08/22/2015

    Love all these layouts and pretty much everything @emma_kw does! Lovely to get to know you better and congrats on the feature, it is very well deserved!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  2. confettiheart says…
    08/22/2015

    Hello Emma :-)
    Another favorite artist of mine in te spotlight this month... so awesome!
    Congtars @emma_kw!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  3. emma_kw says…
    08/23/2015

    @Carson @confettiheart Thank you both so much! :)

    0 Reply 0 Replies
  4. jenjeb says…
    08/23/2015

    I love all your work! Your layouts are always so stunning and inspire me to scrap!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  5. dptuffy says…
    08/23/2015

    I love your layouts here! Your work is just beautiful. How cool that you're doing 6x8 LOs! Was so nice learning more about you here. Congratulations! @emma_kw

    0 Reply 0 Replies
  6. theslowcrafter says…
    08/23/2015

    I love all of your layouts too. Count me as a fan!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  7. heygillian says…
    08/23/2015

    Stellar. Your creative mind is just stellar. :)

    g

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  8. jamiewaters says…
    08/24/2015

    So wonderful to see them all together like this! Love it!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  9. emma_kw says…
    08/24/2015

    Thanks so much for the kind words! :) I really (really!) appreciate it. @jenjeb @dptuffy @theslowcrafter @heygillian @jamiewaters

    0 Reply 0 Replies
  10. HelloTodayCreate says…
    08/25/2015

    Love your creative work @emma_kw xx

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  11. zekymmer says…
    08/30/2015

    I love how you arrange all the small geometric pieces with stitching! So inspiring!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  12. catherinecornell says…
    09/01/2015

    Every layout is just so beautiful, loved getting to know you more, thanks for sharing!

    1 Reply 0 Replies
  13. emma_kw says…
    09/01/2015

    Thanks so much!! @hellotodaycreate @zekymmer @cathdean

    0 Reply 0 Replies

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