Yours, mine and the truth, right? Well, for today, it’s Shar’s, Brande’s and Cheryl’s. We chose one sketch from the January/February 2013 issue of Creating Keepsakes to work on, and tried to illustrate how different our processes are.

All Smiles layout by Maggie Holmes for Creating Keepsakes

From a sketch to a page, inspired by another’s design …

I have so much appreciation for every other scrapbooker out there who shares their pages or sketches. I often flip through a scrapbooking magazine or my Smash Journal of sketches and page ideas to get the creative juices flowing. When I find a sketch that gets my attention – I use it to inspire my page. Sometimes I absolutely match the page, sometimes I am inspired by the general idea, and sometimes a portion of the embellishment. For this case, I was inspired by the general look and feel of this sketch. Below is a glimpse into my thought process as I turned it into a page for my album.

1. First I ask myself what pictures, event or activity does this sketch call out for? In this case, I immediately saw a boy, an event that had motion in it or something of that nature. The arrow embellishments were getting too much of my attention. It’s a part of the page I like a lot but I don’t want to be distracted by a portion of the page if it prevents me considering it all. And I do not have many boyish photos to choose from. So I covered the arrows with a slip of paper and kept thinking.

2. Turn the sketch or flip the photo orientation. Often I will turn the sketch to see it differently; rotating it to see if it inspires me more on its left or right side or even upside down.  Then I also think about flipping the orientation or position of the photos. For this sketch I liked the two small photos peeking out from the left instead of the right.

3. Then I think about the photos I have that I have sorted in threes. (Side note: when I print photos from an event, I sort them into potential layouts and tag them with the number of photos for that page and any notes or ideas I have for scrapping them or the event. So I flipped through my photo box for those tagged with three.) When considering photos I think about a set of photos I have that fit the orientation of the sketch, in this case a portrait and two smaller horizontals. I don’t worry too much about if they are the exact size outlined in the sketch. For this page I found a set of three and ended up with one 5×7 and a couple 4×6 that I could slim down.

4. Next is the paper selection. Looking at the photos with the great Mediterranean coloured buildings in the background – pink, orange and yellow – of Cinque de Terre, Italy; I knew I wanted to bring out these colours in the paper I chose. I was inspired to go really girly and the K&Company Urban Rhapsody paper collection had just the look I was hoping for. As a rule anytime I am looking for feminine paper, I look to what I have from K&Company first.

5. Now I cut the cardstock or pattern paper for the page and start building without glue. I look at the sketch and figure out how many different patterns or papers I need, what sizes and then cut each; keeping in mind that if there is a particular colour I want to be more of the focus, I make sure some of the bigger pieces are that colour. As I cut, I lay them out as detailed by the sketch. Sometimes I turn pieces to show more or less of the paper than in the sketch until I get the look that suits my pictures best and makes me happy.

6. Then I add my photos, without glue, on top of the layered paper. Once I have the photos lying on top, I tend to make a few adjustments to the pattern paper behind, shifting some up or down to make sure they are showing nicely behind the photos. At this time, I make any size adjustments to my photo sizes and determine if I should back them. There was a lot of patterned paper and busy photos for me on this layout, so I decided to back the photos in a simple white to create a break between photo and pattern.

7. When I am happy with how it looks, I get it all glued down and then move onto the really fun part: embellishments! For this sketch, I already had in motion a really feminine look while drawing from the colours of the buildings, so blossoms were top of mind. I found these great paper blossoms that I have had forever (sorry I don’t have the name or company of these blossoms to share) and they had exactly the building colours (pink, yellow and orange).

8. Now my next favourite part … the title. The location of these photos was Riomaggiore, Cinque de Terre and there is no way I had room for a title that long. So I went with the short name, my friend Lisa and I (we are the ones in the pictures) called it: Rio. I chose feminine letters to continue the feminine theme and touched the wooden letters up with some plum chalking that I also used on the edges of the papers in the sketch. These letters are Expressions Wood Shop from our friends at Pink Paislee.

9. Voila, and thank you Maggie Holmes for the great sketch! 🙂