Sweet Shoppe Designs – The Sweetest Digital Scrapbooking Site on the Web

Hello Sweet Shoppers! I am excited to bring you today’s Featured Scrapper – Tali.  Tali’s gallery is filled with gorgeous layouts.  Please make sure you check it out here and leave her some love on a few that catch your eye.  She’s a blogger as well!

Let’s learn a little bit more about Miss Tali, shall we?

My name is Tali Vander Stouwe. I have about a month left of my twenties, and I live in South Dakota. My husband Eric and I have 3 children: Ella, our 5-year old princess, and Jacob and Boden, our 2.5-year old identical twins. I’m currently a stay-at-home-mom. The last job I held was as an office manager/legal assistant for an attorney who was recently on the MTV series 16 and Pregnant. (My life is super boring so I have to mention things like that to make me sound interesting!) I love, love to cook. I try at least one new recipe a week and I’m lucky enough to have 4 very willing taste-testers! We watch a lot of movies and Netflix has become my best friend. I love music, TV, and sleeping. 🙂 Super exciting stuff over here!

My main gallery is definitely MSA. I started paper scrapping in October 2005 and switched over to digi scrapping in November 2007 after I realized that having newborn twins and a 2.5-year old daughter was making it impossible for me to sit down and scrap traditionally. I haven’t paper scrapped since although I do look through my old supplies every so often. I started out with PSE4 and now use PSE7. I use Lightroom 2.0 to edit my photos. I take photos with a Nikon D40.

Tali also took a few moments to answer a few of my questions.

Q. What gets your scrap mojo going? Usually a fun new kit. Many times I see a new kit and know what I want to do with it, exactly which photo I want to scrap. Sometimes I take a photo and can’t wait to get it off my camera, edit it, and scrap it. To keep my mojo going, I usually listen to the TV or music while scrapping. I can’t have silence!

Q. What is your favorite color scheme to work with? Just about anything with gray in it lately. I almost always stick to neutral backgrounds. I also love turquoise and red together.

Q. What do you do when not online? Chase after my wild trio and try not to go crazy. 🙂 Now that the weather is warming up we can finally spend some time outside. I also love reading and I watch way too many TV shows. Our DVR is constantly loaded to the gills.

Q. What is your favorite movie character and why? I’m going to answer with 2 because I like to be difficult. My favorite male character is Chris, Robin Williams’ character in What Dreams May Come. It is probably the only sappy flick I will admit to liking. If you haven’t seen it, do it. I think you’ll get why I love his character so much. My favorite female character is Bliss, Ellen Page’s character in Whip It. Not only is she cool, but she goes after what she wants. And, roller derby is pretty awesome.

Here is some gorgeous work from Tali:

I like this one because it is pretty far out of my comfort zone. The bright colors and patterned paper make me crazy but they work for me here and I was so proud of myself for using them. I love this photo of our little family.

I did this page for the Ultimate Artist contest at MSA. Ella says the craziest stuff and I knew I needed to get it all down. This page makes me laugh out loud each time I read it. She is a hoot! Plus, it is filled with some of my favorite current photos of my girl.

This is one of my absolute favorite shots of Jacob and Boden. Close to together, smiling, having a blast. I have such great memories from that day. I am really happy with my layering on this one. And, I used a blue background, so that is fun for me. 🙂

Blog Bonus #2 – Tali’s gallery is fantastic! One thing you will notice is that she loves to use a nuetral background with pops of color. Your challenge is to do the same.  Please mark this challenge as Blog Bonus #2 in your April Portfolio.  You have until April 30th to complete & post this challenge.

Here is some inspiration from our babes:

Kreesta used Sisterly Love by Kristin Cronin Barrow & Meg Mullens:

Here is one from Keely using Lift Me Up by Lauren Reid & Lauren Grier:

If you have any questions, please let us know!  Have a great rest of your Friday!