The Story of Hanging on for Dear Life

Last month I took part in the sketch challenge at Scrap Therapy (which I just so happened to have won!) so it really is time I shared this page here too.

The sketch was a little challenging for me, mainly because I don't often 'do' circles in my layouts. I'm pretty much strictly straight lines and sharp corners. And certainly I'm not into cutting any curved lines into my photos so I knew having a round photo was out of the question.

Once I figured out how to incorporate the circle element and still have the layout look like mine the rest was easy. There's no fancy circle-cutters in my house so I resorted to tracing around a dinner plate to get the size I wanted!

One of the first things I do when I approach as sketch is to figure out where I'm going to add my journaling if the sketch hasn't allowed room for it. This is essential for me, so I always have to adjust the sketch accordingly. For this one it meant clustering all my elements in the top left corner so there was space below it to write everything I needed to say. Despite how much importance I place on journaling I often don't know what I'm going to say before the pen is in my hand!

On this occasion I took my cue from the photo. It's pretty cute right? But what you don't see ('cos I cropped it out of the photo) is that she's actually stuck up on top of the playground and can't get down. That's the face of pure terror! Ummmmm yes, I stopped to take a photo first ;-) So I wrote about how it's ok to be scared sometimes, and that circumstances aren't always going to go according to plan but that some things will remain forever stable like her family's love.

The Story of the Noonicorne

Whoopps.... totally forgot to share this one with you here. It's been up on the Scrap Therapy forum for a couple of weeks now!

It's their sketches man... they get me every time. Look at this one - doesn't it inspire you but make you think all at the same time? For me I was loving it but wondering what I was going to do with all those horizontal lines of embellishment.

Ultimately it occurred to me... I'll just stick to what I know best. So I turned all those lines into text instead! A lovely long title is easily made if you use a quote. And it doesn't have to be a famous person's quote of course. This one comes straight from the mouth of (my) babe.

You see, I have a bit of a habit of using the phrase "hold your horses", especially when dealing with my inpatient Little Moodles. She doesn't like taking no for an answer though, and has come up with her own response. She states in defiance every single time... "but I don't have any horses. I only have cows, and a noonicorne." That's the 3-year-old version of unicorn in case you don't speak toddler.

I'm going through a bit of a phase of using up some quite old stash. I would like to claim I'm purging but that would imply throwing things away. Instead I'm just making sure I rifle down to the very bottom of the scrappy pile and using what I find down there. It makes me so happy to see one of my very first (and very favourite) collections put to good use again after all this time. I've still got quite the pile of this Crate Paper Seasons collection.

By matching in a couple of new products, like the JBS Vintage Animal Mini Deck it gives it a slightly different spin. What do you reckon.... are you up for the challenge of using some old stash?

The Story of the Linear Layers

Just to keep things rolling along in theme I thought I'd now share with you my take on the March sketch challenge at Scraptherapy (since in my last post I shared my February interpretation).

Sometimes I think I'm so focussed on scrapping the 'everyday moments' that it can take me a little while to build up the courage to scrap the big events as well. But this is highly important too of course, so finally I've come to scrap the photos from Munchy's 6th birthday..... from September last year!!

I interpreted the sketch in quite a linear way, and translated it into a grid design. But I've still got the main elements of the two photos on the right, and the equally weighted large decoration/embellishment on the left.

I recently picked up a few more 6x6" Crafter's Workshop stencils at the Scrapbook Expo and I literally just traced around this lovely graphic number stencil with a black pen. I cut out the number six separately and misted the background to add emphasis to it alone.

I had fun with this colour scheme in case you couldn't tell!! Reminds me of lollies.. which is perfect for this party layout. I'm so glad I've finally finished this. Now I've got to work on Moodle's last birthday, but at least that was in November so I guess I've got a couple of months left up my sleeve ;-)

Sometimes I try to define my design style or wonder how I would describe it to someone. I've decided that I'm going to call my current style "linear layers". What do you think? Does that sound right?

 

The Story of the Whinging Song

What a good mother I am......

She bursts into tears (could be she's throwing a tantrum, could be she's actually sad) but the point is - my scrapping instinct took over and I stop to take a photo first before I comforted her.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that does things like this?

Before I show you how I took on the Scraptherapy March Sketch Challenge I thought I better show you my February attempt first. I found this sketch was quite inspiring and challenging as it left so much open to interpretation.

 

I started off by making that large square into a stencil feature. I chose one of my favourite TCW Balzer Designs 6x6" cloud stencils, sprayed it until saturating with a couple of mists and then plonked it face-down onto my paper. Fun hey? They rest of the layout built up from there.

The story behind this layout is a little bit strange. I'm not sure if other families are like this, but on regular occasion we've taken to disciplining our girls in song form. What I mean is that instead of yelling back at them when they throw a tantrum (which is rather tempting.... and still happens too of course) The Man made up a catchy little tune with lyrics that teach a good lesson and we annoyingly sing that to them instead ;-)

We've got a couple of songs, but the most commonly sung lyrics go "you can whinge all you want, but the answer is no, the answer is no, the answer is no!" etc.
Certainly this is one family oddity that needed to be documented. I'm sure as they grow older they're going to complain about these crazy things, and I needed to get the true story out before it turns into legend.