Featured Designer – Allison Pennington
Happy Friday Sweet Shoppers! I hope you had an amazing week. Spring is making a bit of an appearance this weekend for us, I’m excited to get outside in some fresh air and enjoy the sunshine!
Today we have a new Featured Designer, and get to feature her for the first time! Allison Pennington joined our Sweet design team in August last year and we’re so thrilled to have her and get to know her better during her feature. Her modern kits include a touch of nostalgia combined with hand-drawn elements that complete the kits so they are perfect for layering and clustering around your photos, or for fantastic white space layouts that tell your stories perfectly.
Allison created this great Featured Designer kit, A Little Spring, which is yours FREE with any $10 purchase from now until the new releases go live on April 18th. You’ll love the soft pastel pinks and greens with neutral accent colours to round out the palette. This collection captures everything spring – blooming flowers, new beginnings, and both stormy and sweet weather. Whether you’re documenting a garden stroll, an Easter celebration, or simply the magic of the season, A Little Spring has the perfect charm for your pages.
Now let’s learn more about Allison!
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?
Forum signatures and a custom printables shop were the very first (early) steps to accidentally ending up here. I never did paper scrapbooking and was never particularly crafty but here we are anyways! My first shop was at PolkaDotPlum and I will always be grateful that they gave me a chance. I landed here at SSD last year and I’m having so much fun.
How do you define your style? What does that style include? How has your style changed over the years?
I’m always wrestling with this because different brands and bosses have described my “style” in opposite ways. One brand I work with described me as a minimalist. Another as a maximalist, etc… I’ve been trying to make midimalist a thing but it’s not catching on. I like LOTS of colors and patterns but also like a lot of white space. I’m trying to reclaim some of the messier habits I had early on but it’s hard!
How do you keep your collections fresh and new for themes that are done again and again like holidays, weddings, scrapbooking, etc.?
This is a constant struggle – how many different ways can I make a snowflake? One of the things that I’m working on this year, specifically, is playing around a bit more during the early stages. Letting myself make mistakes in the “sketching” process vs. trying to force things out.
I also keep a running list of holiday/season themes that are more specific (I had plans for a very specific Valentine’s collection this year that I didn’t get to do because we got hit by the flu… maybe next year?)
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!
I joke about this one sometimes but it was the second kit I ever released. It was also the first time I had a dumb name for a title, wrote it on a scrap of paper, and then built a kit around it. (Still a large part of my process) It’s much worse than I remember it!
I had fun making a Christmas collection last December for the first time in a while! Dear Santa came together without any struggle – I had a pretty clear idea and it came out how I intended (a rarity!)
Are you an adventurous person? What has been your greatest adventure?
Absolutely not. I raised 4 kids that are basically all the same age. That was enough adventure!!
What’s your most memorable childhood adventure?
We spent a lot of time in Montana when I was a kid – my aunt & uncle lived there so we traded holidays between there and here (Portland)…this trip involved all sorts of wild family adventures but also check out those fluffy pigtails!
Would you rather go on a relaxing vacation or an adventure hike?
One of the worst things I learned about myself in the last few years was that I like hiking. Totally ruined my sense of self. This is my favorite place to hike – Salmon River
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?
NAP!
What is your current desktop or cell phone wallpaper? Why did you choose that image?
My perfect angel:
What’s the last really great book you read or tv show you watched?
Severance. Unfortunately my husband doesn’t watch it and trying to recap any episode of the show to someone who hasn’t seen it makes you sound like an insane person.
Do you have hobbies other than scrapbooking, photography, or memory keeping? Tell us about them.
I like video games, naps, and harassing my husband 🙂
Now check out what the SugarBabes have done with the Featured Designer kit!
That’s it for this week – come back next Friday to see what 15 products Allison has picked for her Featured Designer 15 sale starting on April 15. Until then, keep on scrapping!
