If time is not on your side, but you still want to create, why not start with a sketch? Even the talented members of our design team find starting with a sketch the perfect way to get creative, yet still make something new and special! Let’s take a look at the awesome layout that design team member Tracey Fox created with this week’s sketch!
Happy Valentine’s Day, and welcome to the first Elle’s Studio sketch day of February! I’m so excited to share this project I made, inspired by the super cool February sketch. Check out the sketch, which features a large layered focal point photo, a journaling tag, and some great horizontal stripes extending out from these elements across the page:
The horizontal lines on the sketch provide a great opportunity for creativity! When I see something like that on a sketch, I immediately start brainstorming about all of the ways I could interpret them—with patterned paper, mixed media, washi tape, digital die cuts, etc. For this layout, though, I immediately thought of the awesome rainbow stamps in the Sunshine & Laughter stamp set and decided to stamp rows of rainbows across my page.
Supplies | February 2020 Kit, February 2020 Cut Files, Polka Dot Journaling Tags, Be Happy Stickers, Coral Puffy Alphabet Stickers, Cork Stars, Acrylic Clouds, Simply Wonderful Wood Veneer Banners, Love Is 6 x 8.5 Paper Stack, Sunshine & Laughter Stamp, Dated Stamp
To stamp my rows of rainbows, I used a ruler to draw some light pencil lines across my page two inches apart to create a guide for my stamping. Each rainbow in the Sunshine & Laughter Stamp comes in all one piece, which is very helpful if you are stamping them in a single color, but I used scissors to cut the stamp apart so I could stamp in multiple colors. Don’t be afraid to cut apart your stamps to achieve the look you want! I do this all the time to separate words and phrases or just to make stamps work for my needs, and it only makes them more versatile without affecting their performance in any way. I chose three ink colors (a deep pink, bright orange, and a bright blue) and stamped the rainbows across the layout, one color at a time.
Once the rainbows were on my background, I was ready to build the rest of the sketch on top of them. The sketch is absolutely perfect for an enlarged photo, but since I usually prefer to make multi-photo layouts, I chose to create a grid of four 3″ x 4″ photos instead, and that resulted in a 6″ x 8″ collage for my layout’s focal point. I grabbed the Love Is Paper Stack and chose some of the fun papers to layer underneath the photos. I just love how the sketch provides some great guidelines for where to place your layers, because it helps make layering so accessible for scrapbookers who might not use this type of technique very often.
While the “You & Me” title on the sketch could represent any title you want to use, both the You & Me Wood Veneer and the You & Me digital die cut in the February 2020 Cut Files offer great options. I chose to use the cut file, and I cut it out of one of the fun new Polka Dot Journaling Tags. I decided to make the title say “Muppets & You & Me,” because the word “Muppets” made from the new Coral Puffy Alphabet Stickers fit perfectly onto the “this is a story about” tag from the February Kit.
I had more to say than would fit on the journaling tag, so I decided to let the tag house my title and the date. I typed up some journaling strips that I adhered to the top and bottom of the layout. Feel free to make a sketch work for you and the story you are trying to tell. If something doesn’t fit where the sketch shows, just move it somewhere else!
The finishing touches on this page were the embellishments. I let the sketch guide me a bit by placing some die cuts from the February Kit, a couple of the Simply Wonderful Wood Veneer Banners, and a sticker from the Be Happy Stickers. Next, I added some more embellishments around the page, like three of the Cork Stars, some more stickers and die cuts, and the Acrylic Clouds.
In the end, I’m so thrilled with how the elements on this page worked together to help me tell a story about an awesome day visiting a Jim Henson exhibit with my husband. The rainbow and cloud motifs work together perfectly to symbolize the Muppets (thanks to the “Rainbow Connection” connection), and I love how the stamped rainbows added a bold, graphic element to go with my bold and colorful photos. I love it when a sketch can serve as the jumping off point for a one of a kind layout! Thanks so much for stopping by the blog today and checking out my take on the sketch. I’d love to see your interpretation!
Show us how you interpret the sketch in your project! Whether you create a layout, card, or traveler’s notebook spread, we want to see it! Post on Instagram using the #EllesStudio hashtag, or in our Elle’s Studio Facebook Group!