Congratulations to our September Spotlight Scrapbook Place Member of the Month Holley Barnhart!

MEET OUR SEPTEMBER BLOG MEMBER OF THE MONTH !!!

Congratulations to Holley Barnhart  Our September Scrapbook Place Spotlight Blog Member of the Month !!! Many of you may know her but how much do you really know about her???? Holley  joined Scrapbook Place on Jan 10, 2008.   She resides in Austin TX , with her wonderful and loving husband John.  Holley and her husband have been married since 1997.  John and she  had their wedding in Las Vegas, just Holley, John and Elvis. Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go. You have made my life complete, and I love you so...
Holley has a wondrous story to share with everyone about her brain surgery, She is now 4 and a half years seizure free.  Her story about that is at the link below it is just an incredible journey:
http://holleybarnhartsblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/holleys-story.html
Holley grew up in San Antonio, Texas.  She went to college at Texas Tech and got her degree in Electrical Engineering. She took art classes in college, which all of her professors hated.  They would often tell her no and refuse to sign her class registration.  It required, that she go to another adviser, in a different college (than the college of engineering) to get approval to take the class. It is hard to imagine but even her own college adviser,  just didn't like her.  How funny is it that in her last semester she ended up doing such a profound senior project that she got nominated to the National Science Foundation and was then offered a Scholarship, by her own university,  for graduate school!!!   She said, I am sure that my professor could have fallen out of his chair when he found out who he had to come "chat with and be nice to" yessiree Ms Holley Barnhart!!! 
I bet you did not know that Holley is a huge Basketball fan, she has gone to NBA All Star weekend in San Antonio, Cleveland, New York City, Golden State, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta. 
Holley was even once Featured as a Super Collector in a Basketball Magazine "Beckett Basketball Monthly"  for having one of the best basketball collections, in the world. (They pick 10 sports card collectors a year). This is so amazing Holley!
Holley started crafting (well always as a kid crafter she says), but she seriously started card making when she stumbled into a scrapbooking store one day called, Picture It, in 1999, she purchased a paper set, with a small brass stencil bear,  holding a heart shaped balloon. She says her heart  fell in love with embossing, embossing of all kinds....she was totally hooked.
Holley had her first publication in Vamp Stamp, using CDs  in 2000;
The same time as her publication, She got a job to go work at NASA for the International Space Station.  She immediately packed up her life in Austin, TX and off she went to Huntsville, Alabama.  Holley says her dear hubby (at the time boyfriend of three years) John quit his job (his brand new very well paying job) and went with her! She worked on a huge test system for Boeing, for the Cargo bay, of the Shuttle. Shuttle missions at that time were happening almost monthly.
 Boeing did a 25% layoff and Holley volunteered to leave, as living in Alabama was not her cup of tea, called home.  She was never going to permanently relocate there and for all of her co-workers, that was their home.  John and Holley came promptly back to Austin and her husband started working at Tokyo Electron.  At the time the engineering market was so harsh.  Holley spent much time teaching stamping classes of different types, polymer clay, wire working, jewelry making...you name it. She also had gone back to engineering and was contracting at several companies.
One day Holley finally sat down and started her wonderful daily blog showing the world all of her awesome talent and if that were not enough she began with her first design team within her first month of opening the blog, many of you know her blog well it is called Holley's Blog http://holleybarnhartsblog.blogspot.com    If you don't know about it or have never heard of it you are missing out on many, many great things there.  Please check it out and invite your friends and family to take a peek, you will soon be hooked!  Holley's first Design team was Sweet Pea Stamps. After several months with that company, She was approached by another Design team , and she started working with them, I Brake For Stamps.  Holley spent a year with them.  She was then asked to join Paper Temptress and just a short month after stopping at, I Brake for Stamps, she was asked to join Squigglefly.  After that she would just try out for those Design teams that she really wanted.
Some of Holley's special interests are      Rubber Stamping, Cardmaking, and Scrapbooking
One More Special Note about Holley, Every FEBRUARY she has a huge celebration on her blog, giving away wonderful prizes everyday due to her successful brain surgeries. Most especially she does it to alert people about Epilepsy she also does it as a HUGE thank you to all the crafters out there, both old and new who were so supportive and sent her hundreds of emails, cards, prayers and such while she went through such a tough time.  Holley shares that there are all sorts of wonderful companies giving away goodies and she wants to share them with everyone she possibly can, so please join in as she want everyone to get some great items.
Below is a picture of Holley and John in Istanbul about a year after her surgery. Oh did I forget to mention she likes to travel especially if it is scrapbook related.Thank you Holley for sharing your interesting life with us.