Featured Designer – The Nifty Pixel
Happy Friday Sweet Shoppers! I hope you’ve had a fantastic week. Winter has hit us again in Alberta, with really cold temps and a LOT of snow. I’m waiting for the weather to catch up with the scrumptious Spring goodies that are in the Shoppe – I just have to learn to be patient I’ve been told.
Today is the start of a new round of Featured Designer features and kits, and a brand new theme for this round! This year we’re celebrating ADVENTURE to go with the Choose Your Own Adventure in Scrapbooking challenges we’ve been having fun with in the forum. Each Featured Designer kit will be based on an “adventure” of sorts. From the adventures of every day life to adventures into space, under the sea or through a good book, you can be sure that our designers will rock this theme and we know you’ll want to collect them all!
First up we have the incredible Emma Stafrace of The Nifty Pixel. If you take a look at her store you’ll find an awesome collection of great kits to celebrate everything in your life. If that wasn’t enough, she ALSO has fantastic templates called Page Drafts that work with any sort of kit, with some super creative ideas for page design. As a template addict I’m always in awe how stunning they are and how easy they are to use. Her Featured Designer kit – Life’s An Adventure – shows this perfectly. Em’s kits are so full of fantastic flowers and earthy foliage and the perfect themed elements to give your pages extra special touches. I am so in love with this colour combination and Em’s take on the Adventure series. You can get this kit FREE with any $10 purchase from now until the next Featured Designer debuts on March 22nd.
Em has created some great add ons to her featured designer kit, available as a bundle here:
And not only that, there will also be this Nifty Freebie in the The Nifty Pixel Friends Group and it will be shared in the Nifty Newsletter too, for those that don’t do Facebook. This painty goodness just makes me swoon!
If that wasn’t enough, there are Page Drafts coming next week that coordinate with the Featured Designer kit as well, check out this Nifty Sneak Peek!
And now to learn more about Emma!
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?
Wow, has it already been a year since my last Designer Feature?! What I can’t believe is that I have now been at Sweet Shoppe Designs for 4 years! I joined the team early June 2020 and what a ride it has been. It’s such a great community and I have found it a lovely place to really settle into designing and nurturing that in such a friendly space. In my previous Designer feature interviews I’ve shared how I began in digital scrapbooking, designing templates and setting up Page Drafts as my original business before The Nifty Pixel came along. So definitely read last year’s FD post HERE if you’d like to get up to speed you might even see a pic of 5 year old me as a nurse, I remember that so clearly and even the smell and sound of the plastic almost 50 years later!
How do you define your style? What does that style include? How has your style changed over the years?
I think I definitely lean into vintage because I’m a sucker for ephemera. I also love moody palettes and a touch of grungy goodness, that just gives off old world vibes to me. There just isn’t anything as good as weathered and torn elements to get my heart a flutter.
Where do you see your designs going in the future? Is your focus changing in any way?
I have always loved the artsy mixed media approach to scrapbooking but I think I’m really starting to explore that more and making it an integral part of my design process. You will see that coming through in my papers I designed for my Feature Designer Kit ‘Life’s An Adventure’. I had so much fun creating those, using paint, textures and blend modes and love the mix of traditional scrapbook styles of realism mixed with more artsy design techniques and processes.
Are you an adventurous person? What has been your greatest adventure?
This is a hard question because I absolutely love adventures I just haven’t really been on any recently. I mean there hasn’t been any hikes, mountaineering or jumping out of a plane recently because life has served me up a different road to travel these last few years. Post cancer has been a challenge but I feel like I’m coming through to the other side. Excitedly I can say I am currently in the GET HEALTHY & HAPPY ERA of my life! My focus has been on home & family these last few years and now it’s about being a happy, newer version of me. Maybe what I’m actually doing is sub-consciously preparing for my next big adventure, one of my bucket list wishes is calling me strongly which is actually a great segue into the next question!
Are there any adventures you’d like to go on in the future?
Ooh yeah for sure! I would absolutely love to travel around Northern Central Australia, mainly Uluru. I’d love to do a road trip and live the Van Life experience with my husband and son for a couple of months. The top end of Australia is stunning and I need to fill my cup with some of those incredible sights. I’d also like to make my way around the Western seaboard of Australia and swim with the Dolphins in Monkey Mia. What an incredible experience that would be to share with my boys.
If you had an hour to yourself, but were not allowed to use it to scrapbook or design, what would you spend the hour doing?
I would book myself in for a head, neck and shoulder massage. In fact I could totally sign up for one every day, lady muck lapping it up!
What is your current desktop or cell phone wallpaper? Why did you choose that image?
I have my two most favourite people in the world on my phone. My husband Daniel and my son Tige. These two are my everything. My husband works away so seeing his face staring back at me makes me feel more connected to him and then I just can’t get enough of my son’s smile so there’s that too!
Now that you’ve learned all about Emma – and added a new travel bucket list item to your list for the Dolphins in Monkey Mia, check out these great inspiration pages from the SugarBabes that are created with Life’s An Adventure.
And last but not least, one from Emma herself:
That’s it for today, come back next Friday to see which 15 products Em has picked for her Featured Designer 15 sale that will go live on March 19th – you won’t want to miss that! Until then, keep on scrapping!
