I'm excited to share with you this week's Featured Fiskateer.  So without further ado . . . Here's Courtney.

Hello!  My name is Courtney Bruesch and I am Fiskateer #8459.  I am a happily unmarried 28 year old artist living just North of Chicago, Illinois where I attended Columbia College Chicago and earned a BFA in Photography.  Needless to say I work as a professional commercial photographer; think catalogs, websites and the like-not weddings or events!

I have been scrapbooking for about five years when the resistance from my sister Shelley (Fiskateer Number 8356) was futile.  It began with purchasing some cute, edgy stamps for her to make me albums with.  After attending a local crop with her, I learned the tools and went crazy with them and really fleshed out my style (which is severely different from hers).  Now I complete paper art in many different forms including 12x12 single layouts, 8.5x11 single layouts, collage, mini-albums and art journaling.

I am also seriously into crochet at the moment and I am working on two blankets; one a ripple blanket and another a granny square blanket comprised of granny squares that my blog readers and blog friends swap with each other called 'The Blogger Blanket Project'. 

Save for all negative connotations my life motto has essentially been 'Do it until you get caught'.  It doesn't matter how you interpret that phrase just as long as you allow yourself to live without borders, boundaries or precedents.  It's something that I like to share with people and hope they pass it on.

If I had to give a piece of advice for anyone just starting out in the paper arts, I would suggest making everything you use from materials you already have and don't worry about acid-free this and that.  I found this to be the best way to figure out who you are as a paper artist.  There is no shame in making your own embellishments, creating something that is finite or using scraps of paper from someone else's project.

I would love it so much if you would take a peek at my work!  I can be found on the Fiskateers site here. 

Thanks so much for accepting me into this community, it is so inspiring!

Thanks Courtney for sharing yourself and your fun style.  So wonderful to get to know you better!