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

Happy Friday Sweet Shoppers! It’s my favourite day of the week, when all the new releases go live and a new designer is featured where we can get to know more about them and what makes them tick.

Our new featured designer today is Mirjam of Pink Reptile Designs. Mirjam’s kits have a distinct style, filled with painty goodness and lots of themed elements to create pages about every subject you could think of. I especially love her templates, with their great white space and her alphas are legendary, they are so versatile for all your pages!

Before we learn more about Mirjam, check out her Featured Designer kit, My Type of Adventure. This is the newest in our Adventure X series, and I love where she went with it! Inspired by a love of typography, and fonts, this is a great kit to document your ‘type’ and your love. The vintage palette works for all sorts of themes, this kit can be used over and over! Best of all, this kit is FREE with your $10 purchase from now until the new releases go live on August 23rd.

What better way to get the above kit free than by getting the add ons to complete the collection? This add on bundle includes a great arty kit, alpha and cards and really rounds out the great kit!

And now to learn more about Mirjam!

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?

I have always been very creative. Even as a child I would make crochet cups and saucers for my dolls [something my grandmother taught me], I drew and I painted, knitted, etcetera.

I started paper scrapping in 2004 whilst trying to come to terms with the death of our first dog Kenzo, and I fell head over heels in love with this hobby because it gave me the opportunity to put all my creative quirks into it. I’ve put handmade knitted and crocheted items on layouts. I’ve machine stitched, hand stitched and painted on layouts. You name it and I probably did it.

In March 2009 I officially turned digital and although I still have an urge to feel paper or fabric from time to time I have to say I very much enjoy this clutter free variation of scrapping. It brought me a whole new field of techniques to discover and I have learned so much since!

In October 2009 the team from Zig Zag Scrap gave me the opportunity to even further broaden my creative horizon, this time as a designer and I discovered that I love to create kits! Then sadly Zig Zag Scrap closed in October 2012. I learned however that when some doors close new ones open.
Another dream came true when I found myself a new home at the Lilypad and I found myself working side by side with designers that I have admired since my early digiscrapping days in 2009.

Then finally I joined this amazingly kind and talented team of scrappers and designers at Sweet Shoppe Designs when I opened my store here on January 29, 2022.

What comes first when designing… theme or color palette?

I always start with a title or theme. Then I put together a color palette that goes with the title/theme. That’s important because for me I could not make a Lovey Dovey kit without a good red, pink and or orange. Or a sea theme without blues. That would be crazy, right?

The palette helps me with the overall feel of the kit. If it is nostalgic, bright and happy, sober, retro or maybe nature inspired. That helps me to come up with what type of papers and elements I want to include in the kit. More vintage items, modern, artsy ones….etcetera. Once I have got the elements and papers most times I then make the artsys followed by the cards and then the alpha.

What are your must-haves when creating a kit or collection? How do you know when a product is “finished”?

There’s a few basic items that I personally look for when I myself am scrapping a page. Those items will always be in my kits in one way, shape or form. Plus I am always looking for versatility. Items that make that you can use the kit for different occasions even though the kit is themed.
Items I will always use are:

• raised flowers and foliage/leaves
• string, thread and/or ribbon
• some sort of scatter – be it made of beads, sequins, glitter, flowers
• a few worn items (things like torn or cut paper bits, frayed fabric, torn cardboard, etc.) to give my page a less-digi-perfect feel
• fasteners (a few buttons, a couple of stitches, and at least one brad and/or staple)
• an assortment of theme specific elements including some that are flat (like wordstrips, stamps, transfers, rub-ons or stickers) and others that are raised.

I create my elements and add them to the preview as if I am making a page. As I am filling the page/preview I can see if something is still missing or if the element pack is finished. Same goes for the artsy pack. For the papers and cards I use a standard amount so I know that I am finished when I meet my quota (sometimes when I still have an idea for a pattern or a card that I think cannot be left out I will add an extra paper or card).

How do you keep your collections fresh and new for themes that are done again and again like holidays, weddings, scrapbooking, etc.?

I’ve been designing for almost 15 years now [I can hardly believe it]. What I find the most challenging at this point is to come up with fresh, new ideas for my kits. I do believe that even if  you are working with a theme you have already worked with you can deliver a totally different end product but I do need a starting point: an idea to spark my mojo and get me started.

That’s why I love to try out new stuff and why I love taking courses to learn different techniques. This way I have introduced handmade crochet appliques, doodles, handlettering and handmade stamps to my elements and I have used textures and handmade drawings too. That’s just a few of the things I have done to keep the fun in designing and delivering something fresh and new for customers.

Are you an adventurous person? What has been your greatest adventure?

I don’t consider myself an adventurous person. I do like to learn new stuff and try out new things, see new places and meet new people. I definitely challenge myself but I think that is more on the creative side and personal growth.

Would you rather go on a relaxing vacation or an adventure hike?

It depends on what you call an adventure hike. I looked up the meaning of adventure and found: an unusual and exciting or daring experience.

All our vacations include exploring new environments and lots and lots of walking. So I definitely consider them to be unusual for us (because it’s always new territory that we are exploring) and exciting (because we don’t know what we are going to find, see and or do). But it’s mostly fields and little towns out in the country for us. Not climbing mountains or volcanoes and not visiting places where we could run into bears or snakes. Haha!

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?

At the moment I’d say I would take a nap. It’s been quite busy the past few weeks…LOL

If you could go on a date but only had $25 to spend, where would you go?

I would go to Sint Annaland. That is a small village that is only a 30 minute drive from our home and we would go there to have a nice long walk along the coastline while talking about and planning our next vacation. And then we would get sandwiches at Heerlijkheid Havenzicht. They are only 8 dollars a piece but soooooo good!

I totally agree with her on the bears and snakes!

Before you go, check out these pages that the SugarBabes have made using the Featured Designer kit. As always they are so creative and inspiring!

That’s it for this week, check back next week to see which 15 items Mirjam has picked for her Featured Designer 15 sale that starts August 20th. Until then, keep on scrapping!