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

5 days and counting, Sweet Shoppe Scrappers – how’s your Passport looking?

In case you’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the scoop: each month, the Sweet Shoppe issues 18 scrappy challenges in the form of a Passport, all centered around a single theme. Complete a certain number of challenges, filling up your Passport squares, and you can earn a 20%, 30%, or 40% discount in the Shoppe. Finish all 18 challenges, and you’re entered in a drawing to win a $50 gift certificate to spend on Sweet Shoppe supplies! It’s a fantastic way to get inspired, stay motivated, and keep producing scrapbook layouts for your albums month after month. You’ll find the new Passport posted in the Passport to Sweet Stuff forum on the first day of the month.

There are five more days to finish September’s Passport to Crazy. So if you’re stuck on a particular square and need a little inspiration, we’ve got some standout layouts from your fellow Sweet Shoppe scrapbookers to share today!

#1 – One Little Word: Delirious

The One Little Word prompt encourages you to create a layout that has the word in your title, includes the word in your journaling, or is inspired by the word. I have two examples that both took the “inspired by” approach that I hope will inspire you.

iScrap’s gorgeous layout “Season of Change” includes stunning photos of Central Park in the fall and journaling focused on the feelings, sights, and scents of autumn. Though the word “delirious” doesn’t appear on the page, the phrase “uplifting and energizing” does, so it’s an excellent fit for this challenge. As for the layout, I am in love! Those photos! Those colors! And those clusters are simply beautiful.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I spotted tanyiadeskins’ layout “Grab Your Balls” in the Gallery. (By the way, she’s referring to Ball canning jars, as evidenced by all those photos of her hard work.) Once more, the word “delirious” does not appear anywhere on the layout, but the image of the woman holding the mixer in the lower-left corner just screams delirious to me! I appreciate tanyiadeskins’ choice of a messy template with wild angles and stacks of elements rather than something clean and linear. The chaos of her layout definitely reminds me of my mom’s kitchen during canning season.

#4 – Inspired By: Random & Quirky

One of my favorite types of layouts is the “then and now” photo pair. In this case, Romajo showcases her daughter’s quirky expression now, in the large photograph, and the same expression on her face 11 years ago in the smaller photo. The floral clusters are beautifully done and do a perfect job of framing her layout.

#5 – Dealer’s Choice: Rewind – Pie Charts

Challenge #5 is to incorporate a pie chart somewhere in your layout. Some scrappers have chosen to make it their page background; others have opted to make small pie charts and use them as page embellishments. Amyjcaz opted to make it the focus of her page, using the pie chart to communicate how she divides her free time between her various hobbies and passions. “All About Me” layouts are essential to include in your albums, and this is a fun one!

#7 – Photography: Alternate Dimension – Perspective Switch

This month’s photography challenge was definitely more challenging, especially for those scrapbookers living in areas under lockdown. “Take a photo that makes people wonder if they’re going crazy when they see it at first glance by altering the perspective of the photo!” Though you’re encouraged to get out and shoot a new image, it’s not a requirement, so if you’re struggling with this challenge, I encourage you to look through your photo library with … well, a new perspective. And if you still can’t find something that works for you, take a look around. You might find the perfect subject sitting right outside your front door…

Autumn is a season of change; you could look at it as a time when trees flip their leaves from the branches to the ground. In “It’s All In How You Look At It,” Jan Merkley captured this idea brilliantly with her perfectly framed photograph.

#8 – So Sketchy: Monthly Inspiration!

How many action photos do you have, unscrapped, that were shot rapid-fire one after the next? Whether it’s someone running, dancing, jumping, playing a sport, or – like HeatherB – doing skateboard tricks, it can be overwhelming to try and decide which few photos out of the bunch you should include on your layout. Well, when in doubt, why not scrapbook them all? HeatherB’s approach to this month’s sketch allowed her to create an action storyboard of her son’s skateboard practice that reads almost like a flipbook. There’s such a tremendous sense of motion on her page – I love it!

 

#9 – Seasonal: There’s a Greatness to Your Lateness

Our Passport prompts are intended to jump-start your scrapbooking and are open for your own personal interpretation. As our Passport Maven, SugarBabe Loni writes in each month’s Passport FAQ post, “I encourage you to … take a creative approach [and] apply prompts so that they’ll work for you and your family.” What tjscraps did with prompt #9 is an excellent example of not scrapping a challenge literally; instead, she used it as a jumping-off point and made it work for her. The prompt was to “celebrate September 5th’s Be Late for Something Day by scrapping a page that documents your struggles to stay sane while trying to be on time (or not)!” She’s not a person who runs late; she’s a 15-minutes-early-kind-of-person. So that’s what she scrapbooked about instead. I love her layout design: clean and simple, with just the one layout cluster to the left of her photo, stacked with not one, not two, but three different clocks. It’s a simply perfect reinforcement of her theme!

#12 – Composition: Weighted Triangle

This layout jumped out of the Gallery with vibrant greens and blues against its dark wood background, but it’s the cascade of adorable photographs that makes it a standout for me! Who doesn’t love a happy toddler in cute glasses? Challenge #12 prompts us to compose our layout in a weighted triangle, and StacyLynn nailed it. If you’re struggling with this challenge, why not try her approach? Draw a triangle with the shape tool on your layout’s canvas; clip paper to it, and then layer photos and elements on top of it, using it as a guide for your element cluster or cascade’s shape. 

#13 – Journal: Feeling Crazy

When a challenge involves journaling that feels too personal to share, remember that you’ve got the option of obscuring your words before posting it to the Gallery. You can use the Blur tool to make it unreadable or take a similar approach to CaroRen. She clipped her journaling to a shredded paper piece so it’s only partially readable. It’s perfect for this art journaling-style layout; it shares just enough to communicate that she struggles with anxiety and depression but obscures the details.

#14 – Currently: Avoiding…

I chose “Goodbye Summer” by Leablahblah as our Standout for challenge #14 for three reasons: first, I love full-page photographs! Second, her clusters and shadowing are stunning and provide a sense of depth to her layout that I adore. And third, just like tjscraps, Leablahblah opted to take a creative approach to her challenge. Lea didn’t include the word “avoiding” anywhere on her layout. Instead, in her layout’s comments in the Gallery, she noted that she is avoiding saying goodbye to summer. The layout itself is a final farewell to summer – I’m guessing that’s their last summer outing or the final photo of a vacation – and Lea was able to document this moment in a way appropriate for her family while still filling that square on her Passport. So don’t feel constrained by the Passport prompts – use them as a jumping-off point like Lea!

#15 – List: Crazy Good Top 5

The challenge was to scrap your top 5 crazy good things that happened to you since COVID began. Lidia opted to list 5 bad things and then “flip the script” to explain how she’s found positives within each one. I adore journaling like this! It turned her layout from simple documentation of what happened into a deeper exploration of Lidia’s approach to staying positive amid “Crazy COVID Times.” It can serve as a lesson to future readers on how to do the same, plus illustrate what kind of person Lidia is and her values.

#16 – Pop Culture: Peopling… Yay or Nay?

What do you do if you don’t have photos? Why, use journaling cards instead! This layout by clucaswvu04 is a perfect example of how you don’t need photographs to create a fun and compelling scrapbook page. The two cards she clipped into the template’s photo frame are hilariously on point for this challenge. But she didn’t stop there; clucaswvu04 expanded on the topic in journaling below, explaining her personal connection to the subject. Humorous, beautiful, and meaningful, and not a single photo to be seen!

#17 – Details: Dot. Dot. Dot.

Challenge #17 encouraged us to “play around with circle backgrounds and allow them to take center stage.” I love the approach bienejen took, specifically with her shadowing! About a third of the circles have an inner shadow, so they appear recessed, as if they’ve been cut out of the page. The rest have a drop shadow and look like they’ve been adhered to the top of the page. It creates great visual interest and is a creative twist on this challenge.

That’s it for this month’s Passport Standouts! Hopefully, I’ve got your creativity flowing. So what are you waiting for? Grab your Passport to Crazy and get to scrapping! You’ve got 5 more days to fill those squares. I know you can do it!