Welcome to Semester 3 {2014}

The Times They Are A-Changing!

We love sharing with you through this blog, and all the wonderful people whose work we are able to showcase through it. We always try each semester to make it that little bit better. Darcy, Gillian and Leandra are always chatting about new ways to inspire people, so we like to use each new semester as an opportunity to make a few tweaks in our quest for PERFECTION! LOL Is there such a thing?

This post is a head's up of the tweaks for this, our final semester of 2014. Where did the year go?

1. Challenges

We are shifting from a weekly challenge to a CALENDAR MONTH challenge. The reason? Challenge admin on a weekly basis for Darcy, Gillian and PA HQ is pretty full on, so operating on a monthly basis is much easier for us to manage.

The challenge will open 7pm on the 1st day of month, and close at 7pm on the last day of the month. That's easy to remember right? There will be a post go live on the 1st of each month at 6:30pm (so that it doesn't interfere with the 7pm routine) called 'September Challenge', 'October Challenge' etc, so you can expect one of those in about 30 mins.

As with challenges in the past, you can link any new item you have created in direct response to a PA blog post you have seen during that calendar month. Just make sure to link your work to the exact night that inspired you, and explain why you were inspired by the designer that night, and how you made your item. Full guidelines are given on the challenge post itself, so just take a look to make sure you are aware.

The prize gets BIGGER (of course) so every month we are giving away £50 to spend in the PaperArtsy retail shop on items of your choice. NB the £50 includes VAT and postage, so think of it as a £40ish value prize and the remaining £10 should cover the VAT for UK/EU people and postage costs (no VAT applies to Rest of World people).  Obviously the postage value is affected by the weight of what you put in your basket, and where in the world you live, but I'm sure you'll figure it out!

If you are a challenge winner, just email Darcy (she is the challenge supervisor), and she will explain how you can claim your prize from our website! Awesome!

2. Weekly Line Up

Our semester runs for 4 months, as you know, and we have 4 Guest Designers (who you don't know *squeak*...I wonder who they could be...), we have tweaked the order of the nights their posts go out ... the monthly challenge means less pressure on the weekly line up (whew).

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we will feature our fabulous Guest Designers who rotate on a 4 week cycle. The 'Guest Designer' intro will be included in their first project post on the Monday evening.

The Guest weekly rotations follow on from each other, even when there is a 5 week month, and we always end up with a gap at the very end of the semester. The gap in the 3rd semester finishes earlier than usual...but that's good, as by the time Xmas is here we are all crazy busy anyway!

We also have other 'random' guests during the week, they might be past guest designers, special famous people, or very special #PAtwit people...whoever they might be,  this semester they will feature on Thursday and Friday evenings. (how exciting)

That leaves the weekends free to feature our very own Signature Stamp Designers, a rapidly growing crew!

We also have other things to fit in and around the few odd gaps we might have left; videos, retailer interviews, posts about shows we are attending, surprise competitions, new product launches and so on.

As usual, all post go live 7pm every night of the week (London Time).

3.The Week Ahead

• As today is the 1st of September, at 6:30 we will publish the 'September Challenge {2014}' post with information regarding the challenge guidelines and expected etiquette. We are not big on rules, and there isn't really any great change, but it is appropriate that we make it clear what we expect. This will be the post to which you link your blog to ours for the entire month of September.

• At 7pm tonight, the first Guest Designer of Semester 3 will be announced by Gillian (Gillibobs, as you know, is the Guest Designer boss/supervisor). Suffice to say tonight's guest is someone who we have worked with off and on for many, many, many years :) We love her! In an hour, you will find out who she is!

So all in all a busy night ahead! We hope these minor changes meet with your approval, and we'll catch you all again very soon!

~Leandra, Gillibobs and Darcibobs