Scrapbooking sketches: to follow or to reinterpret?
supplies: everything except the pearls and the tags is from Sassfras – a mix of Sweetly Smitten, Paper Crush and Mix & Mend, plus those grey letter stickers which I love so much it’s crazy.
If I remember correctly, the first time I started drawing sketches for scrapbook pages was about a million eight or nine years ago when I worked on this ‘Use your Stash’ challenge for store customers. They were printed on index cards, so you could keep them in a recipe file, which was novel. And ‘Use your Stash’ seemed like a revolutionary phrase back then and now it’s more a mantra of the whole hobby. Funny how little things change!
But what hasn’t changed is how I work with a sketch. Way back then, I was a really linear scrapbooker. Straight lines. Barely any embellishment. I remember asking myself ‘would stitching on this layout be too much?’ when that was the only embellishment I planned on adding. Today, stitching would never be too much, even if I’d already added stickers and patterned paper and gems and so forth. So when I followed a sketch then, my page looked just like the sketch. Completely and totally – never, ever making a change.
I have a little secret to tell you about Kelly Purkey’s Sketchbook 3 class. I contributed a layout and when she gave me the sketch, I started making some changes. I was a little worried… her photos were angled, mine were straight. Her sketch had a grouping of papers in one spot; I had spread my grouping across the full page. I moved one of the page elements 90 degrees and added an extra area of embellishment. And although I liked the layout, I was really worried that when I sent the page to Kelly, she would think I had ignored too much of the sketch. But she said she liked the page and then I just waited to see how it would look with the other interpretations of that page. My face must have been a picture when I read her commentary: Shimelle stuck closely to the sketch… and to think I had been worried I had taken too much liberty!
So while some things change, others stay the same. If I follow a sketch, I just don’t go too far away from it. And this page follows that rule too: it started from this sketch challenge over at the Sassafras blog. That sketch caught my eye and made me wonder if a sketch that is quite square and streamlined could still work with lots of flowers and layers… and it gave me another chance to put the Foldies to use! (If you missed that last weekend, see this post for more info and a video.) The collection of blossoms below the title – with the big yellow flower – is a foldie accent; the floral pieces in the corners are cut from Sweetly Smitten patterned papers and layered with the matching stickers.
I think it’s just time I embrace that if I do follow a sketch, I’m really into the following part. And that’s okay, because the layout still looks like I made it… at least I think so! Curious though: do you really follow a sketch, just use it as a starting point then never look at it again or frankly can’t fathom starting a layout with a sketch at all? (If you do like a sketch, you can find all the weekly sketches from my blog here, in one place.)
I hope this week is treating you well. How did we get to Thursday already?
xlovesx
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