Interview with Jessica Sprague

I have long been a fan of Jessica Sprague. I like her work. I like her style and most of all, I like her classes! I’ve featured a class or two of Jessica’s classes and work here at Arts and Crafts because they inspired me so much. And to make life more exciting, Jessica granted an interview especially for Bliss Tree. I am truly honored. Thanks Jessica!

Image: Jessica Sprague

Jessica is a web designer by trade. After discovering scrapbooking in 2004, it has become my professional mission for her to help people become more comfortable using their computers to tell the stories of their lives. Jessica runs JessicaSprague, the premier online community for digital crafting education. Jessica is also the contributing editor to Creating Keepsakes magazine, where she writes a monthly column called Computer Tricks, which demonstrates how to combine digital and paper scrapbooking.

Jessica is also the author of three special issues of Creating Keepsakes magazine, Computer Tricks vols 1-3.

Jessica lives in North Carolina, and living with her geeky husband (as she affectionately calls him) and her two children – Rowen, age 5 and Elliott, age 3.

1. Can you tell us 10 random things about you?
I really like Diet Mt. Dew. REALLY like it.
I am left-handed.
I have two kids, ages 5 and 3, and one cat, named Jane.
I love playing computer games.
I love every kind of sour candy.
I love reading classics – Charles Dickens is one of my favorites!
I was born in California, and have lived in Idaho, Utah, Michigan, Minnesota, and now North Carolina. If I keep moving East, I’ll be living in the ocean next.
Favorite food of the moment: Grilled chicken and roasted red potatoes – yum!
I have this THING with shoes. Favorite brand is Fluevog – love their funky soles and heels!
We built a firepit in our backyard last year, and we light the fire at least once a week. There is something so GREAT about being outside watching the flames, hearing the crackle, smelling the smoke, and feeling the wind in the trees as the sun goes down. And the roasted marshmallows! Yum! You can actually see the firepit in the introduction video for Scrapbook Alchemy.

2. How and when did you discover digital scrapbooking? Who/What encouraged you?

I started scrapbooking in 2004, and was using my computer from the beginning to design layouts and create things like titles and journaling. Katie Pertiet invited me to join her Creative Team at DesignerDigitals.com in the middle of 2005, and I initially told her she must have the wrong person – I wasn’t a digital scrapbooker! But she told me I could use her goodies on my paper pages, and so I started doing that. I used digital products on my paper pages until the end of 2005, when I finally decided to enter the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame contest for 2006 with an entry that combined digital and “hybrid” pages. Some of my very first digital pages went into that entry!

At this point I do about half paper and half all-digital pages, and I LOVE the combination! It’s the best of both worlds!

3. How did you get started with the Sprague Lab? What was your inspiration?

My husband is a software engineer, and my professional background is in both instructional design and web design. This is actually our second venture together as a husband-wife web team, and this particular one started with, “Hey, I wonder if I could teach an online digital scrapbooking class?” It felt like the next step in a progression of events that led to what we do now, and it has been awesome!

4. What do you think draws people to Sprague Lab? What is the unique thing that it/you offer?

Our goal has always been to offer the very best in online digital crafting instruction, with lessons that are easy to follow and provide beautiful results. It is a personal passion of mine as an instructor to see students succeed, and find both creative freedom and confidence in their skills, and I think that comes through in all the classes we teach.

5. What else can we expect from Sprague Lab this year? Any special events we should look out for?

This year we started a brand-new adventure into “hybrid” scrapbooking – the combination of digital and paper scrapbooking. As a paper scrapbooker myself, I’ve been looking for a way to provide classes that show how to do a few digital techniques, print them out, and then add them to your paper scrapbook pages. I teamed up with a director and a professional film crew to produce our new Scrapbook Alchemy series, which are self-paced, project-based classes that combine screencasts in Photoshop with high-definition video. We have released Episodes 1-4, and we are releasing episodes 6-10 the middle of May, followed by “Season 2″, which we will release in September. You can see the first four episodes.

In addition to Scrapbook Alchemy for our paper scrapping friends, we’ve got a new intermediate-level photo editing class coming in May, as well as advanced digital scrapbooking self-paced lessons coming this summer. It’s a very exciting year for us!

Now, let’s talk about your techniques and creative space:
1. How do you start a layout? Do you follow a process?

I wrote an article for the April 2008 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine that details both my digital and hybrid process. I’ve never been able to explain it better than this! In writing this article, I really discovered that my process for both types of pages is almost identical, right up until the printing stage. Many people think that digital scrapbooking is simply too different from paper scrapbooking, but I disagree.

The article is a downloadable PDF,

2. Can you please share with us your top 3 favourite projects/layouts you’ve done:

I have two galleries at my blog right now.

One for HYBRID and one for DIGITAL

Below are a couple of Jessica’s digital layouts:

Here are a couple of my personal favorites of Jessica’s hybrid layouts:

3. Can you please share with us your creative studio

Here is the blog post where I talked about my space! Some has changed since then, but it’s mostly the same.