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

It’s time to reveal this this month’s Scraplift Sunday challenge, and it’s our pleasure to have a scrapper who has been in our SSD community a long time here with us.  Who are we being inspired by this month?  None other than the lovely…

Let’s take a few minutes to get to know more about Rae.  We asked her some questions, and she has shared a bit about herself so we can get to know her.

Tell us a little about yourself.

“I’m married with grown kids and grandkids and the sweetest little doodle dog, Taz. I retired from wedding/portrait photography a few years ago but still have a part time transcription home business that allows me lots of time to scrap and get outdoors to photograph the local wildlife, botany and landscape. Binging TV/movies, reading (mostly psychological thrillers) and hiking around outdoors with my camera and Taz make me happy. I’m a homebody and enjoy a quiet life here on the west coast of BC Canada.”

How long have you been scrapbooking? What got you started and what has made you continue?

“I started over 10 years ago as a paper scrapper/stamper, created lots of cards and then started creating pages but I always spent too much time chatting at crops with my friends and not getting many pages created. After a shoulder injury that prevented me from paper scrapping for about 4 months, I ventured into digital scrapping and loved it. I was already familiar with photoshop so it was an easy transition into digi-scrapping. I was able to create more pages than I ever did paper scrapping and I appreciated how versatile products were and cost effective than paper scrapping. It took me a few years to develop my style (which does still evolve which keeps it interesting and fun) and I learned lots of shortcuts in PS to speed up my design workflow. Scrapping has become a part of my everyday routine and I couldn’t imagine not doing it. It is my creative outlet and a fun way to showcase my photos for family and friends to peruse.”

What are some things about your style of scrapping that are important to you?

“I started out as a minimalist scrapper but once I started working with clusters (which was so daunting at first but I kept at it until I felt comfortable with it) I was hooked and my pages started to fill up with more element layers. I have always loved paper designs and when I was a paper scrapper I hoarded so much paper because I couldn’t bring myself to use them, they were too pretty. With digi, I love that I can re-use paper, change blend modes, recolor, etc. Pretty paper makes me happy. Photos are important to me, I take a lot of them, and how I apply a photo treatment or crop can really add to my design process. I will often re-use a photo in various layouts because I can crop and put the focus on different aspects of the photo or apply a different photo treatment, giving it a whole new look. I don’t journal much but am trying to work at it because I would like future family generations to see more than just my layouts. I’d like them to know “me”, so that is a work in progress for me. I will keep trying to add more info onto layouts, and hopefully some day I will feel more comfortable with it.”

If you could give one piece of advice to other scrappers, what would it be?

“That’s a hard one because there is so much I would like to share but, speaking from experience, my advice would be to have fun and experiment (do not compare yourself to anyone, that’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to go down, trust me), don’t be afraid to go outside your comfort zone. You might surprise yourself and find your style evolving, much like mine did.”

If you spend some time browsing Rae’s gallery, you will find that her layouts are just full of that beautiful photography that she mentioned is important to her.  And we think she does such a great job of framing those photos within her clustering and scattering of elements on the page.  She has some really amazing layouts, and that is why we knew we could all find inspiration for our scraplift in her work.

We’ve chosen 5 layouts from her gallery, and we challenge you this month to lift one of them.  Take a look at December’s scraplift inspiration…

As always, our team of Sugar Babes has joined the challenge and shared these layouts inspired by Rae.

We do hope you enjoy this month’s lift.  And we thank you, Rae, for joining us on the blog!  Happy scrapping everyone!