A Quick Sketch with a Few Tears

Growing up hurts, right? Well, in the case of my little girl it did literally hurt when she turned 6 years old last September and I took her on a shopping trip to get her ears pierced for her birthday. She was so excited, couldn't wait to go, loved picking out that first pair of studs (blue gems for September's birthstone) and was excited right up until the minute they put her up in the chair and started getting out the tools. Then she got nervous and wasn't sure about this decision! But 5 minutes and a few tears later, she had pretty sparkly ears and thought she was pretty grown up!


I've had these pictures sitting on my scrap table for awhile now (obviously, since this happened almost a year ago) and I haven't found just the right paper, idea, etc. to get me going on a page. So last week when I printed out our sketch and paired it up with some paper from Cosmo Cricket, I thought, "Yes! This is perfect for Lindsey's ear piercing pictures." And here is my result:


First, I want to give you a little insight to how I transposed Susan's great card sketch into something for my 12 x 12 layout. I've noticed that sometimes it can be hard to see beyond a sketch or pattern or layout example and adapt it to fit your own style, supplies and project. So, first I studied the sketch for just a bit:

Then I started sketching my own idea right next to it. I wanted to leave the basic elements-- background, than a scalloped edged mat, then another mat with slightly rounded corners. But I wanted a rectangle for my main shape instead of an oval since it fits pictures more easily so I changed that basic shape, drew it as containing 3 photos and then shifted it to the left instead of having it in the center. The strip of paper going underneath the oval in the sketch looked to me like the perfect place to put a page title and so I sketched in my title going there and shifted it down instead of in the center of the page. I left the tag element behind my rectangle shape, just as it is behind the oval shape in the sketch and left the flower element in the bottom left hand corner the same. Ta-da! Using Susan's sketch as a starting point, I now have a sketch for a 12 x 12 layout.


Once I had my plan, I went to work! Using the Hello Sunshine line from Cosmo Cricket, some mint Double Dot cardstock from Bo Bunny and green Chatres Lace Prima flowers I constructed my layout. I love the bright colors in the Hello Sunshine papers and make sure you get the striptease paper to go with the collection-- one of the strips contains the quote "Happiness is getting up in the morning, going to bed at night and doing what you want in between" which totally made me smile!

A quick technique idea for letter stickers-- place your letters on a separate sheet of plastic, wax paper, or other surface they can peel off easily and then apply some rubons right over the letters. When you pick them up, they will off cool patterns and give more dimension to your title. Here is my letters while I was working on them (though I ended up only using one of these words on the layout):


And here is what they looked like after I took them off with their rubons over the top and put them on the layout:



We would love to see your take on our sketch so make sure to join us in our BSC#9 and turn that sketch into your own beautiful card or layout! You have from now until September 15th at 11:59 pm EST to enter your project for the chance to win a $20.00 voucher from The Beary Scrap where there are always lots of fabulous goodies to choose from (like Kimm's brand new Tear Bear critter patterns-- Sidney the Skunk, Owen the Owl and Salem the Cat, oh! they are so cute!)

And don't forget, you still have a couple more days to join us in our Farewell Blog Hop to our dear DT member, Elise!