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

Happy Sunday to the Sweet Shoppe community! Angie here – I’ve been missing in action the last couple of weeks as I healed up from the two eye surgeries I underwent earlier in the month. Big, huge thanks go to Kiana for filling in for me with last Sunday’s Spotlight post – Kiana, you’re the best!

Speaking of spotlights, today, I get to turn that light on our team of Sugar Babes and show off some of the incredibly gorgeous work they’ve done in the last couple of weeks. So pour yourself a cup of your favorite warm beverage and settle in for a heaping bowl of inspiration and a side dish of eye candy. Here we go!

In Celebrate Friendships by Esther Wisdom (mywisecrafts), the lovely cascade of flowers and stars with the photo smack dab in the center caught my eye. It creates this fantastic sense of movement, almost as if the paper across the top was ripped off, and like an explosion of confetti, that cascade of loveliness came bursting out. I am also a big fan of the contrast in her black and gold color scheme.

Cherish by Mary (Marnel) turned out to be the best kind of puzzle. I stared at it for what felt like forever, trying to figure out what she used for the base of her heart before I realized it is the smallish gold cookie cutter from the Christmas Without You kit. My brain is so programmed only resize smaller, don’t resize larger, resizing larger loses image quality, that I forget sometimes you can break your own self-imposed rules. Since Mary covered the heart with all those gorgeous layers of flowers and ornaments and greenery, plus their lovely shadows, if she lost a little image quality by increasing its size, it didn’t matter. What a gorgeous layout!

Christmas Kitty by Cassie King (kingsqueen82) is one of those photo & kit matches made in heaven. Just look at the cat illustration at the bottom center – it’s the spitting image of her kitty! Pets are members of our families and deserve their own space in our albums, especially when they’re animals as photogenic as this one, so I love that Cassie is creating layouts like this.

O Christmas Tree by Kim B (jak) features our 2021 Advent collection, Brown Paper Packages. Have you been collecting its pieces and parts throughout the month? Remember to visit our 25 Days of December Delights each day, where you’ll find either a Shoppe special or a new download for Brown Paper Packages.

Kim B’s layout shows off so many lovelies from the kit: the fir tree stamps, the greenery and berries, the paper flowers, the butcher twine and ribbon, those gorgeous folded stars and the sewn trees. But what I like best about this layout is the fact its overall shape echoes that of a Christmas tree! It’s a brilliant bit of page design. Take a step back from your screen, and you can more easily see the triangular shape. Masterfully done!

Merry & Bright Photography Challenge by Dalis … how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: a stunning and masterfully shot photograph of her lit tree. Three lovely clusters mixing flat sticker-style and 3D-style elements. And the whole layout on a white mat against a dark wood background with little sprinkles of scatters in just the right amounts sandwiched between the two. Love, love, love it!

2021 Faces of Jake by Rebecca (MamaBee) is an excellent example of starting with a template and jazzing it up to match your style and photos. I love the way Rebecca tucked the junk food stickers behind and around the photos and letters. My favorite is the taco that pops out from the letter N in November. It’s so fun!

2014 The Nutcracker by Krista Lund proves that neither pocket-style nor monochromatic layouts have to be boring! All of that pink mixed with the neutral white and gold is given depth by adding iridescence, glitter, and shine. And while her base of photos and papers fit within her template’s pockets, Krista breaks outside the box, so to speak, by creating clusters and a stunning title that spans multiple pockets. It’s an adorable, visually stunning layout!

I’m a sucker for layouts with pretty clusters, so it’s no wonder Made With Love by Cherry jumped out at me from the Gallery! Look at how she mixed three or four different kinds of greenery to create depth and then inserted one sprig of berries between the foliage layers. Each cluster uses the same five flowers, but they’re mixed in different sizes. But my favorite part has to be how each cluster contains one edible item! While it’s true that most real-life floral clusters won’t include cookies or chocolate bars, they evoke the theme of her page so perfectly – and the beauty of digital is we don’t have to worry about the chocolate melting all over the poinsettias!

Ho Ho Ho by Sheri Malcolm (SeattleSheri) is an exquisite composition centered around an absolutely stunning image. Would you look at that photograph? The sheer sweetness of a little brother looking up at his older brother with such joy and adoration makes my heart melt! Sheri used it as the centerpiece of her layout, placing it in a frame atop the sleigh, and then built a detailed, multi-layered cluster around it. I love the cheeky Santa hat perched at a jaunty angle on the corner of the photo frame. The multi-layered bow perches atop the layout like the star on top of a Christmas tree. It not only caps off her page but ties it all together by using the color blue to connect it with the boy’s shirt in the photograph below. I am absolutely in awe of this layout. Sheri, you are a true artist!

 

Well, my friends, that’ll wrap up our last Sugar Babe Sunday of 2021! What do you think of these layouts? Is there anything I missed? Tell me in the comments below – and have a great week to come!