Featured Designer – LJS Designs
Hello everyone! How is July going for you? Things are finally slowing down in my neck of the woods, so maybe I’ll find time to do a little scrapping! It looks like everyone is really enjoying our Summer Scrap a Thon! Just as exciting as the scrap a thon, is introducing our next featured designer, Lorie aka LJS Designs! I love Lorie’s illustrations and word snips, they give her collections such a unique feel. Plus, I’m always looking for extra words, I love that she includes extras like these.
As you know, this year our theme is ‘Designer’s Choice’ What does that mean? Well, just what it sounds like! This year our wonderful team of designers will be coming up with a heap of fantastic new collections inspired by whatever is exciting or motivating them in the moment. They have total freedom to express themselves however they’d like, and we’re super excited to see where this adventure takes us over the next year. Lorie’s Seas the Day is so much fun for summer! Everyone that’s hitting the beach can absolutely use this beauty, but even if you’re not, the colors are so neutral, it will work in any collection. You can get it for free, just add $10 worth of goodies to your cart and it will automatically be added to your cart. The offer is good until our new releases go live on July 28th.
Gosh, I love it! I’m such a sucker for blues and teals in a kit! Plus all the red. So pretty! Do you need even more? Just look at these add-ons she’s created!
Now, as you all know, we always interview our designers for this feature and this year the questions are straight from the Sweet Shoppe community, let’s sweet what Lorie had to say.
Tell us about your journey with digital scrapbooking? How did you find out about it? Did you start with paper first? How did you get started designing? Where was your first shop? How and when did you end up at Sweet Shoppe Designs?
Lorie: I have been scrapbooking is some form for as long as I can remember. I can recall putting family photos into an album at a young age and going back to rearrange them over and over. Or at least until Mom said enough. LOL When my son was a baby, I was still using regular photo albums, but when we went to Disney for the first time when he was nine, I purchased a scrapbook kit and quickly became hooked on papers, washi, alphas, etc. I created a number of traditional albums for him through the years.
I transitioned to digital scrapbooking through my genealogy hobby. I wanted to included photos and personal information together on a page in my records, so I created basic “layouts” in my genealogy program. One day at the grocery store, in or around 2008, I saw a magazine called Digital Scrapbooking and knew I had found my new passion.
Again, my genealogy hobby was a big part of my learning process for digital scrapbooking. So much so, that I started a MyFamily.Com site called Simply Scrapbooking to teach others to scrap their family history. Just like me, my members became hooked on scrapping and we moved as a group from just creating genealogy layouts to scrapping everything and everyone we knew.
Because I was teaching other people to scrap, I needed supplies for them to use and had no place where I could affordably purchase the amount I would need for everyone in the group. That was when I started creating little things for them. I stuck with that site and dabbled in designing for a few years until my friend, Anita Hill, who is a web designer “pushed me out of the nest” by buying me a domain and creating my blog. She had a lot of faith in my abilities, more than I did, and was the driving force behind my design career.
After creating and giving away freebies on my blog for a while, I was fortunate enough to take Traci Reed’s Design Star class at Scrapaneers. I learned so much from Traci, not only about design but about Photoshop itself. She really helped me step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to become a Sweet Shoppe Designer.
While I knew going into designing that I wanted to sell at SSD, I also knew I couldn’t start at the top, I had a lot of work to do. I opened my first shop at Memories.Com on October 13, 2013 and put my energy into learning everything I could about this craft. It took me years and stints at O Scraps, Scraps Stacks, Ginger Scraps, The Digital Press and a few other shops before I was invited to join the SSD team in December of 2018. It’s hard to believe it has been five years, but time really does fly when you are having fun.
What comes first when designing? theme or color palette?
Lorie: My design process always begins with a title, which establishes my theme, and then the color palette. I love color, but I struggle to create palettes that I feel are cohesive without being repetitive. I usually use Pinterest as my mood board by pinning images that inspire me to theme boards. From there I pull images into Photoshop and start pulling different colors from them. I fine tune the colors while I am creating my paper patterns and have been known to totally redo all my papers because of a slight change in color.
Show us a recent mood or inspiration board? or two.
Lorie: You can find my pinterest color board, where I pin palettes created by others, here: https://www.pinterest.com/
Here is a mood board that I put together for my FD kit, Seas The Day
How do you stay motivated or deal with the loss of mojo?
Lorie: I’ve always believed that motivation is simply showing up and doing the work. Having said that, this year I haven’t released as much as I have in previous years because I have struggled with my energy levels. I’ve been pushing myself for the past 10 year to design full time while working full time and trying to maintain that pace took a toll on my health. I have struggled with reoccuring infections that left me feeling depleted and defeated. That is when I struggle with my creativity. I have to feel well to feel creative. Thankfully, my doctor was able to get to the root cause of my infections — they’re actually caused by too much histamine in my body — and developed a game plan to help me deal with them. I am feeling better and creating more these days.
How long does it take you to put a collection together from start to finish?
Lorie: Forever. Here at SSD, we make big kits and even bigger bundles, so it usually takes me two weeks to create a collection. I do most of my work on the weekends, putting in at least 8 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday and then usually about 3 to four hours in the evening during the week. I tend to work better at night so I usually end up staying up longer than I should and paying for it in the morning. Now that I am an empty nester, designing helps keep me busy and out of trouble.
Show us a preview for one of your first kits, compared to a recent kit you’ re proud of. We want to see how far you’ve come!
Lorie: This is the first kit I ever created for sale: Parking Lot Party.
A recent one I did that I really love is Mouse Trip. I love planning a trip to Disney, so this kit was a must have for me before we went in March.
What brings you joy?
Lorie: I am easily amused and find joy in the silliest things. For instance, I love watching videos of Walter the French Bulldog. He makes me laugh so hard. I enjoy spending time with my small family. There may not be many of us, but we are tight and always have a good time together. I am an introvert who is very good at entertaining herself and can always find enjoyable things to do.
If you’ve looked into your family history, can you share a funny story about an ancestor?
Lorie: I have been researching my family history for the last twenty years and have discovered a lot of interesting facts about my ancestors. For instance, my dad’s family were in Virgina by 1603, my mom is a Mayflower descendent and both my dad and mom had ancestors at VallForge with Washington. Through my dad, I am related to Thomas Jefferson and to Alexander Graham Bell and Daniel Boone through my mom.
There are not as many funny stories to share, but I do love the story about my great Aunt Mary, who, depending on who you talked to, was a healer, or a witch. One day when her brother, Joss, was a small boy, he threw a rock and hit a stray black cat in the back leg on his way to school. When he got home later that day, Mary, his oldest sister, was limping badly. When he asked her what was wrong, she took him to task for hitting her with a rock earlier that morning. Mary passed away before I was born, but my Uncle Joss told me the story and was absolutely convinced that Mary was a witch who could become a cat. What surprised me even more is that my father, who knew Mary, believed it as well. But, as he said, it was okay, because she was a good witch. LOL
Do you have hobbies other than scrapbooking, photography, or memory keeping? Tell us about them.
Lorie: Besides genealogy, I love to read, decorate tier trays and have recently taken up diamond painting, thanks to our fearless leader Robin’s answer to a forum post about hobbies. I find the process very relaxing and am surprised about how quickly it goes. I am currently working on this kit:
Ohh, maybe I need to try this diamond painting, but you know what, I think we need a kit based off this photo! Lorie, hint hint! Now, before I let you all go shopping, let’s see how the babes have been using Seas the Day this week.
Ok everyone! Don’t forget, Seas the Day is yours for free with a $10 purchase! You have until our new releases go live on Friday, July 28th! Don’t wait.
