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

Hey everyone, Sweet Talk is back for 2024 with a slightly new format but the same awesome goal. Getting to know YOU, our amazing community members. Once a month we will indulge in some “sweet talk” and have some fun getting to know you all a little bit better. This month is a fun twist where we get to know one of our amazing Sugarbabes.

“Getting to know a diverse group of people leads to a better understanding of yourself.” — Alexander Den Heijer

Without further ado let’s dive into this month’s Sweet Talk interview with our amazing Sugarbabe: Sherly

Welcome to Sweet Talk, give us a short introduction of yourself/family and how you found digital scrapbooking.

I am Sherly, known as nietis around the digiland. I am going to be 40 this year, though I am so much not feeling the age. I live in Beijing – China, since 2011, with my university-sweetheart husband, Lan. We met when we were both postgraduate students in Liverpool – United Kingdom, back in 2005. We got married in Bali in 2007, where I spent most of my time growing up until I was 15. We have been married for 16 years and are blessed with 2 children, Michael (11) and Michelle (3), who are 8 years apart.
I found digital scrapbooking through my friend’s blog in 2008, 1 year after we got married, while we were both pursuing PhD in Liverpool. I started by collecting freebies and playing around with Photoshop CS. I went around different forums for quite some time, before finally becoming active in SSD. Now, I am mostly SSD exclusive and I am loving it. 

Answer a few fun questions for us.

1. Give us [3] must haves for the layouts you create? patterned paper(s), flowers, and greeneries.
2. What is your scrapping style? I’d say I have a pretty random style, as I love to explore different styles, but, I am quite often scrapping clusters-heavy pages.
3. What is your favorite thing to snack on when scrapping? I don’t snack, but I do love sipping a cup of coffee, while scrapping.
4. How do you create so many pages during big events? Umm… by abandoning all the household chores I am supposed to do?  Kidding. Mostly I get inspired by the amazing templates and gorgeous collections the designers created.
5. As a Babe, do you still have challenges or struggles with scrapping? Of course. There are times when mojo or time are just not on my side, but there are styles or prompts that are hard for me to do. For example, scrapping a list is so hard for me to do, I’d choose not to do it, if I can.
6. What hobbies do you have besides scrapbooking? Watching Korean or Chinese dramas, reading manga.
7. What techniques, trends, or products are inspiring you right now? I have been intrigued in scrapping with products with lots of stickers in it, such as Traci Reed’s and Kris Isaac’s. They are way out of my usual style, but I am loving the opportunity to try to make a pretty sticker clusters.

 

And of course, we love some Babe inspiration so please share with us your favorite layouts featuring the below & tell us why you chose them:

• a cool technique blending 2 or more papers together. Sometimes, I get to work with a kit that has a lot of papers that I want to use in a layout. One of the ways I get to include all those papers, besides the obvious paper piecing, is to blend those papers together to get a cool effect. That is exactly what I did with this layout.
  
• your favorite element(s) patterned papers, flowers & greeneries. Those are all included in this layout, plus those adorable sticker elements that I have been a fan of lately.
  
• your choice I love it when I get some really cool & interesting challenge to scrap to. In this case, Robin asked us to do some sample pages of combining 2 templates from 2 different SSD template designers. I chose 2 quite different styles of templates from Cindy & Em of The Nifty Pixel, combined and scrapped with them. I truly love how my page turned out!
  

Before you go, share with us a favorite tip you’ve learned over the years: Scrap at your own pace and at the styles that you are comfortable with, because, at the end of the day, it is your hobby that should you get the most enjoyment out of it and the pages are your treasures for years to come. I know that it is easy to get intimidated by other pages that we see in the galleries and feel that our pages are not pretty/good enough. However, as long as we enjoy the process and are happy in preserving the memories we scrapped, that is all that mattered.

Thanks so much Sherly. And thank you all for stopping by to read, until next time happy scrapping.

xo Kiana