Usually when I share a Sketch to Scrapbook Page video, I stay quite true to the sketch and the guests sometimes give it a bit of a twist, but today we’re swapping that around. I designed this sketch thinking of triangles cut from various patterned paper scraps, but once I had my supplies on the desk, I decided to take it in a different direction to embrace the current trend of chevrons and arrows. Maybe I will come back and give the triangles a try too, but rest assured, today’s guest has made that look ever so pretty.
I imagined this sketch with a single photo (4×6 or 5×7 would both work) so the triangles form arrows that point to that important picture. You could replace that single photo with a collection of smaller pictures, or include more photos across that central block of the page if that’s better for your style.
The supplies for this page are all from my March product picks for the Best of Both Worlds, plus some paper stars left on my desk from a project months ago and a bit of baker’s twine.
The photo is of the fireworks at the end of the closing ceremony at the Olympic Stadium – taken as we were leaving the park just ahead of the crowd. Bittersweet! Although my Olympic album will have a few stories that chronologically take place after this photo, I think it will mark a sort of end to a chapter within that book as it comes together. That’s the plan, anyway!
Today’s guest, Piradee Talvanna, stayed true to the idea of all those paper triangles and I love the look of all the patterns she selected. Plus there’s a little something else with her page that may have made me smile!
I had a fun time using this awesome sketch as it gives you a lot of room to play around with; although I did pretty much keep to the sketch only switching the placement of the title and adding in some fun layering details behind the photo. In creating this layout, I used the Maggie Holmes collection by Crate Paper, which had a lot of fun colors and I wanted to be able to incorporate all the colors into the layout without overwhelming it. Hence I decided to keep the background neutral (one color) and instead played on the arrow design with the various colors and balancing it out with the colorful layering/cluster behind the photo. Also I noticed that the fabric frame from the collection had some staples (to keep the lettering in place) and therefore also added some to the arrow design along with some neutral sequins for more details. On the topic of cupcakes, well what more is there to say? Love them!
Piradee Talvanna is from Bangkok, Thailand but currently lives in Singapore with her husband. It was there that she was introduced to the wonderful world of Scrapbooking in mid 2008 and quickly became addicted to all the beautiful papers and fun embellishments. Scrapbooking not only allows her to explore and challenge her creativity but also helps her de-stress after along day at work. She is currently a design team member for Crate Paper, Maya Road and Webster’s Pages and has been part of the Creating Keepsakes Dream Team Member for 2011, 2012 and 2013. You can find more of Piradee’s work on her blog.
Sometimes a sketch helps things come together so quickly on a scrapbook page, and I think this might be a design I’ll be coming back to the next time I need to scrap without a lot of time to spare. It came together quickly, yet I really like the end result – and often when I scrap quickly I am quite disappointed with the end page. Not this time, so hurrah for that.
The sketch is designed for two landscape 4×6 photos, a matted square of patterned paper in the background and one tall column down the middle. That column is the same size as the two photos – 4×12. It’s essentially an off-set plus sign, and I’m sure it could be turned and work well too because it’s just basic page geometry of all those rectangles and squares – plus three circle embellishments to balance all those straight lines.
All the supplies for this page come from my March product picks, plus black cardstock, some yellow sewing thread and stamping ink in black and hot pink.
I need to remember that word stamping idea for future pages. I am always lamenting that I have plenty of colours of ink but almost always use the same three ink pads! Definitely liked the bright colour here to change it up, but glad I stamped off that first ultra-strong layer of colour so the tones would be a better match to the patterned papers.
Of course this isn’t the only way you can interpret the page, and today’s guest, Becky Novacek, has her own unique twist – and she shares how she adapted the page from a 12×12 size to her 8.5×11 scrapping style:
It’s Becky here today, sharing my take on this very versatile sketch, that inspired me a lot. I stayed pretty true to the sketch, although it would have been easy to flip it horizontally. Since I’m an 8.5×11 designer, I found it easy to switch it up to the rectangle versus square design. As I approached this layout using the sketch, I enjoyed using many older products, mixed with new products. I find it gratifying to use favorite older and in the case, no longer available beauties. The background paper and the blue/gold pattern papers were part of one of my favorite Hambly collections. I mixed them with new Basic Grey, Amy Tan, Dear Lizzy, Crate and American Crafts, as well as a really fun Pam Garrison stamp. I switched the circle embellishments to hearts.
Becky Novacek lives in Fremont Nebraska with her husband Tom and faithful dog Scooter. Tom and Becky have 4 grown, married children and ten grandchildren. Becky has always been drawn to paper and photos. As she tried different creative endeavors and eventually discovered scrapbooking, she was hooked. It became an almost daily respite after a long day of work in the beginning, and now it has become an important part of her daily work. Creating free style, homespun layouts that speak her thoughts are what she enjoys most about scrapbooking. You can see more of Becky’s work and daily ramblings at Becky Novacek Photography. You can also follow her on Instagram and Pinterest.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
I’ve been meaning to discuss a little something with all of you about how my philosophy has changed since so much of my teaching now comes in the form of videos. There is one really big idea I hope you will take on board: some times I try things so you don’t have to. I scrap so much and I share almost all of it with the world in some way or another – either in blog posts, in Glitter Girl videos at Two Peas, or in my class content for those of you who sign up for my online scrapbooking workshops. In the past year, I can count the pages I have kept to myself on a single hand.
That doesn’t bother me in the slightest: it is my choice to share with all of you, and if I didn’t want to, then this would not be the right job for me! But it does mean that there isn’t a nice, safe, secluded place for me to go through random ideas without sharing it with you as it happens. If I make every page in a style that’s too similar, you’ll get bored, and some will let me know. If I make every page wildly different from the rest, I won’t be happy with my albums and those of you who like the style I’ve shown you up to now may not be big fans, and some will let me know. So I try different things and I show you right there on the video as it goes. Sometimes I find a real win; sometimes I get the page to a point where I’m happy with it, but I make a big note to self about whatever particular element I probably won’t try again.
When you watch, you can make that decision from what you see, and if you want, you can essentially learn from that in the same way that you learn from a mistake. If I run my title up the side of the page and you don’t like it, you know not to run your title up the side of your page – and you don’t have to go through the stress of moving your title and trying not to ruin your letter stickers to figure it out. Maybe you look at my layout and think you don’t like that patterned paper. Perfect: don’t buy or use that patterned paper. What you see that you don’t like can be just as useful as what you do. But whatever you see? I like it for me and I’m happy to have it in my album – or I would keep working on it or start over!
With this sketch and video, I wanted to really demonstrate what I mean by this process. I wanted to take an idea I have used many times and try it in a way that I hadn’t used before and I wasn’t completely sure would work. I gave it a try and I kept working on the page until I got to a point where I was happy with the layout – but now I know the difference between the way I used this technique on this page and the way I’ve used it before, and I know what I will take forward from there. You can simply look and see what you like and take that forward for your own process without the frustration of discovering it for yourself. I think that’s what I mean. Of course, I also know some of you are stubborn like me and will want to try it for yourself. That’s totally okay too.
Getting on with it then, here’s the sketch. It’s a bunting-inspired banner design across the whole page, on a quite large scale. I’ve used this idea in the past but always on a much smaller scale for the banner, and this time I wanted to use it as a big element that would take up most of the page. Of course, that makes it quite different from the usual way I start my pages with a bunch of different boxes of patterned paper in the background!
This page was made with supplies from the February Best of Both Worlds kit. (And the next sketch video moves to the March kit, by the way.) Of course you can try it with any papers you like! I added some eyelets and twine too, and for those of you who have requested eyelets on pages – I’m afraid this is pretty much the only time I use them these days. I passed my giant jar of eyelets to another scrapper many years ago and haven’t looked back. I just prefer brads, rhinestones, enamel dots, and other simple little embellishments like that to the extra steps of eyelets. But they do add a lovely bit of polish to banners!
Here’s my resulting layout with the idea of banners gone big! But how does it compare to when I’ve used banners on a smaller scale? You can see three different examples in videos when I’ve used them as a smaller part of the page: the Glitter Girl episodes on breaking through scrapper’s block and using scenic patterned paper designs, plus this video when I guested for Studio Calico. But I ask you that in a way that it’s useful for you to figure out for your style! I’m happy with all four layouts in my albums and they all have a different look. If you like one more than the others, then you might want to remember that if you use this sketch but in your own style. All part of the learning process, and drawing those conclusions for yourself can be really important in defining your own style, if that’s something that interests you.
But of course I’m also delighted to include another version from this same page so you can compare already and keep those notes to self in your own mind. So much good stuff with this page by Julie Kirk!
If scrapbook sketches can feel theatrical then this one, with its title taking centre stage and the photos stretched out like a banner, certainly fits the bill making it easy for me to decide which photos to use with it. My sister and I recently spent the day at a ‘Rockabilly Rosie’ workshop where we tried out glamorous vintage-style make up, hairstyles and dance steps. Not all at the same time I might add … although we would have had fun trying! And the retro results seemed just perfect for this style of sketch.
I adapted a few things to help me tell this particular tale such as adding a narrow frame around my background paper as a way to pull in another colour which, like all the shades of papers I chose, was drawn from the colours within the photographs. I also added in a few vintage themed touches like the rip in the top corner and a snippet of text [beneath the left hand photo] which I cut from a 1950s magazine. I couldn’t settle on a way to write my journaling across the page, like the sketch, so I just used a couple of journaling blocks instead. But overall, looking back at my version I realise I’ve stuck fairly closely to the original, which is a bit surprising really as I didn’t think I was that obedient!
Julie Kirk documents everyday stories through her scrapbooking often in combination with vintage supplies and lots of patterned paper. She is regular designer for Papercraft Inspirations and Creativity! Magazines and contributes to the 3DJean design team blog. Through her own blog, ‘notes on paper’ and her Facebook page she shares creative projects, hints and tips, stories, and anything which might raise a smile. Meanwhile she shares her love of vintage supplies through her Etsy shop.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
I love little groups of random items from my desk that can come together to make some sort of lovely embellishment on a scrapbook page. Well, I guess you knew that. But when it does honestly happen from just bits and pieces sat on the desk – remainders of a kit or cast-offs from other projects – it makes me happier than searching out all those pieces for ages. This was one of those times when the pieces were all there and they just fit into the space to finish the page. A journaling card, then washi tape, a strip of paper to bring in some colour, a label to bring in something lighter, letter stickers for initials, postage stamps with the right numbers to back those, something round to add a bit of variety (and an ampersand), and some stamping to pull everything together. That’s how I finished this most recent Sketch to Scrapbook Page project.
This sketch is designed for those patterned papers you don’t want to cover up. Something with a print you really like to see or a pattern that doesn’t read well in small amounts. It gives you plenty of room for writing and the chance to showcase a 4×6 landscape photo with some repeated embellishment – perfect for punching shapes from papers to make your own accents.
All the supplies used for this project are from the February product picks for Best of Both Worlds, with the addition of a sheet of 12×12 black cardstock for the background and a date stamp at the bottom of the journaling card. I used an embossing stylus for the dotting tool with the mist – that’s a quite general craft supply that you might already have on hand, but if not they aren’t too hard to find.
Love locks are something you can see on bridges all over the world, but just in time for Valentine’s Day, there were some special love locks in Covent Garden in support of the British Heart Foundation. It was just as interesting to look at all the other locks as to leave your own. And so pretty through the lens.
Because I was cheeky and running behind, I’ve already shared the guest project for this sketch. It’s a Valentine card by Julie Campbell, and in addition to making a card from the sketch, she shares a clever trick for using rub-ons with stitches to amaze your friends with your hand-sewing skills! Perfect.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
I share enough pages that you can easily put together an idea of my general process. I don’t really reinvent the wheel or worry about replicating a design I’ve used previously. For all the times I start a page by piling a mix of rectangles on top of a subtly patterned background, I like the chance to balance that with a look that’s a little more tidy and inspired by dividing the page into different blocks.
Today’s sketch is not wholly unlike this one in the archives. But this time it’s a bit streamlined and includes more photographs – the same idea of two landscape 4×6 prints but also three small square pictures. This makes it perfect for using with photo photos (Instagram or otherwise) but it’s also handy for cropping into details that might be lost in a larger, less-than-perfect shot. That latter option is what I included on this page.
Again, I’m working a bit simply, but not quite as sparsely as the diagonal sketch. And the recent episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable inspired me to get some of our silly self-portraits onto a page. In addition to the difficulty of taking such a picture, these particular photos make me laugh as this marked the point in the trip where my hair started to get really awkward. Because we had no checked luggage, I couldn’t travel with scissors, and I had a lot better luck getting a mani/pedi on the road than a haircut! By Malaysia, I had definitely reached that point where my fringe was so long it was in my eyes, but not long enough to pin back! I did eventually just take matters into my own hands… I bought some scissors in New Zealand and used the wing mirror on the van to cut it back to something more manageable. We’ve all had these moments of frustration, right? I suppose that’s something that needs to go in the Kiwi volume of these scrapbooks! Anyway, back to this page, these photos were taken when we toured the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The smaller photos are cropped images of the view from the bridge that connects the two skyscrapers.
This page was made with the February product picks for Best of Both Worlds. If you ordered the same, you’re welcome to put it to use in the same way, but of course you can use any supplies you would like! There are just a couple small pieces not taken from the kit – a sheet of kraft cardstock for the background and the wood veneer camera used in the final bit of embellishment. I used Staz-On ink in black for the stamping, since the surface of the JBS stickers is a bit more glossy and while some other inks work perfectly well with that surface, it is a bit more slippery and I’m just less likely to make a mess of it with Staz-On!
I had a slightly different challenge in mind for today’s sketch guest, SJ Dowsett, and that involved taking a page sketch and adapting it to a Project Life entry with divided page protectors. I think there’s quite a bit of potential for adapting sketches in this sort of way, and a more blocked page design seemed the best place to start, but I was really enlightened by SJ’s creative process for making it work:
Using a sketch in conjunction with Project Life presented me with a challenge I hoped I could rise too! – breaking the sketch up into segments so it fit into a divided page protector was harder than I initially thought. But instead of panicking, I got a pen and ruler and drew over the sketch so I could see what areas I needed to focus on.
I applied the rules, of being able to flip and turn the sketch and although it may look loosely based, the double photo, stars, scallops and left hand title are all there. I used an Ampersand card as a focal point, which is a digital download from my _Chalk it up kit available from my digital store has made me want to explore the idea of breaking up sketches like this again for Project Life. Sometimes it is a great chance for your brain to take a break of the planning the weekly layout when it’s already laid out in front of you to work from the sketch._
SJ is a stay at home mum and freelance graphic designer. Creating digital stamps and prints, she spends her days within arms reach of pen and paper for doodling all the random thoughts that wander through her mind. She believes in finding cost effective ways to scrapbook, making pretty printables and noting down the tiny things in life that ordinarily she’d forget. Read more about SJ on her blog and find her digital and printable designs at Little Musings.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
Wow, this has been quite a day already, but the videos are a-loading and it’s definitely all systems go around here! I have one video and sketch for you now, and then I’ll pick up again in the morning with the rest of this catching up session! I hope you find something useful in the mix.
This sketch is meant for a scrapbook page with a single, portrait photo. It’s shown as 4×6 but could easily be bigger – especially if paired with quite simple patterned papers. The smaller strips on the diagonals could be paper, but they could be all sorts of other things – border stickers, washi tape, ribbon, stitches, and so on. This could easily work with additional photos too with a bit of rearranging to the other elements. Feel free to move it around to make it work for you!
I worked very close to the sketch this time around, and the resulting page is quite simple in style. Considering some of the major embellishing I’ve done on some pages in that album, I’ve wanted to add a few simpler pages to give a bit of balance. I love embellishing but I also want the focus of a book to be on the writing and photos, not just ‘wow, you added a lot of stuff there’, so some more stream-lined pages are in order.
For this page, I’m working with the supplies from the February Best of Both Worlds kit. Of course you’re welcome to join in with any supplies you choose.
Why yes, that will be much prettier when photographed properly in some daylight tomorrow morning! But in case you don’t have time to watch the video right this second, here’s a still image for now to show the final project.
This page from today’s guest Paige Evans makes me swoon. I love that stitched strip detail she chose to emphasise the diagonal! Paige has a few further notes:
I made this layout while I was at home in Washington state. I didn’t have my scrapbooking supplies with me, but luckily my sister is also an avid scrapper so we rummaged through her stash and found some super fun things to work with! The sketch was such a great start. I liked the two diagonal lines and decided to keep going with that idea and make diagonal lines of patterned paper across the entire layout. I mostly used the On Trend collection by Crate Paper, with some gold accents thrown into the mix. The placement of the photo, title, three embellishment clusters, and journaling are right where they are in the sketch – sketches make things so easy peasy!
You can find more of Paige’s work on her blog. She designs for American Crafts and Two Peas in a Bucket, and also works for Northridge Publishing, the company behind Scrapbook Trends magazine. She loves to create on a daily basis and enjoys dabbling in everything from fine arts (painting, drawing, sculpting, printmaking), to bookbinding, basketweaving, photography, graphic design, and more.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
I’m back on my feet and in for a major session (or rather several major sessions!) of catching up – with work, with life, with the world it seems! And one of those major sessions was devoted to scrapbook pages and sketches and indeed, the February product picks for Best of Both Worlds, which I’ve now turned from a kit into a stack of pages. And this weekend I’m going to transfer that big catch up session from my desk to the blog, editing and uploading and posting those videos and projects for you!
I’m in class through the middle of today and need to focus, so I wanted to gather the last several sketches here for you if you want to make a start and have missed any of these… then new sketches will start later today once I’m out of class and back and ye olde computer! Sound like a plan? I’ve really enjoyed working with the products this month – I hope you enjoy the process too, whether you’re working with the same supplies or choosing items from your own stash. The 2013 sketches so far then, in review! Each with a link to take you to page examples and videos and assorted other details.
Each post has a spot for you to share a link to your project, but I do have to put a closing date on these otherwise they get filled with random spam links to things that are definitely not scrapbooking material! If you ever complete a sketch and want to share but the end date has passed, you can always leave a link in the comments. If these sketches aren’t quite right for your needs, you can always search through the older archive of page sketches – there’s a link at the bottom of the page that takes you to all those posts.
I hope that gives you a little starting place if you’re an earlybird to your crafting desk today, and I’ll be back later with new sketches, videos, and examples from some of my favourite scrapbookers too! Have a fabulous weekend, wherever you may be!
Just a few years ago, square photos were only for special occasions in scrapbooking terms – it was so rare to see them on a page or a sketch. Since the dimensions of phone screens changed our design norms and brought apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram to the world of the scrapbooker, square is definitely on the map. So this week, how about a scrapbooking sketch that can work with square or 4×6 photos?
I printed my photos at home this time around, and my computer will default to printing a 3×3 inch image on its own sheet of 4×6 photo paper, but if I change the size to 2.8 inches square, it will print two up without any extra fuss. So I used three 2.8 inch square pictures, but I promise there was no real design reason behind such a specific measurement. If you want to print square images from your phone through an online printer, you can certainly do that too. I normally use this process, which I originally posted with my Hipstamatic notes, but Instagram and anything else with a photo cropped to a square works just the same. (If you don’t tend to scrapbook square images, don’t dismiss this sketch: today’s guest artist didn’t go for squares and it still worked!)
This is yet another project from the January kit, and it’s starting to get a bit depleted now but I think there are two or three projects to come before it’s totally done and dusted.
I took quite a few photos of the wildflowers at the Olympic park this past summer, as did pretty much everyone else there it seemed. There were always people posing in the flowers or brave souls zooming in on the visiting bees. In addition to these small photos, I think I will order my most favourite shot as a 12×12 print and place it on the facing page for my album. Not completely committed to that idea, but it’s something I keep considering. I definitely want a large photo of the flowers in there somewhere, so either the full page option or something more like the sketch from earlier this month with the large photo across two-thirds of the page.
Today’s sketch guest is Megan Klauer, who always amazes me with her eye for detail. I really wondered what she would do with a sketch that was quite minimal – and she did not disappoint!
Sketches are often the perfect boost my creative juices need to start flowing. Although I typically use them pretty loosely, they are always the base of my design. When I see a sketch, oddly enough I usually make another sketch from it, putting the sketch into my own words, so to speak. From there, I gather the photos, papers, and embellishments. With this particular sketch I used two vertical photos as opposed to three square images. The vertical tabbed portion became the center stage of my design where I later layered & embellished to my hearts content. I stayed true to the sketch in terms of the title work, but added my journaling above instead of beneath it.
Megan Klauer is a momma of three and wife to her high school sweetheart. She currently designs for Crate Paper, Bella Blvd, Elle’s Studio, Jenni Bowlin, & A Flair for Buttons Etsy shop. In her spare time she does on location photography & works full time as an office secretary.
And now it’s your turn! Create a page in your style with this sketch, post it online, and share it with us. You can upload to your blog or to a scrapbooking gallery like Two Peas or UKScrappers, then just follow the steps to link to your project wherever it can be found online!
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