Sketch-It-To-Me Blog Hop!

Hello my friends, and welcome to my stop along the Sketch-It-To-Me Blog Hop!  You should have come here from Briana’s Blog.  If not, no worries…. just jump on over to Amanda’s Blog for the start!

As many of you know, Amanda is one of the most awesome scrappers and most awesomely web-active creative people in the world.  I’m always so honoured that she lets me bask in her glow, and I love to call her friend!  Anyway, this time around, she’s challenged us to use a sketch.  We were allowed to change it in pretty much any way we wanted, as long as we could explain our changes.  The second part of the challenge was to make a card AND a LO off the sketch. EEEEK!  Many of you know that I don’t do cards.  And I don’t do sketches, either!  So, this is a real challenge, indeed.

First of all, here’s the sketch:

The dimensions of those photo boxes are 2×2 and 4×6.

My LO is Digital, so the first thing I did was create a template of the sketch.  As a little gift, if you want the template, it’s Free to Download Here.

Part of the reason I have a hard time with sketches is, I start with my photos and that usually leads me to a title (I’m a linguist.  Titles are a form of word play with me, which makes me happy!) and only then do I start working on photo placement.  So, starting with a sketch is backwards for me!  Since I already had the template, I started looking for some fun photos that I could make fit the form.  Very strange to me.  But, at the end, I had this idea!  I had a very special vistor this summer; one Miss Amy Glitter!  For those of you who don’t know, AmyG is actually Amanda’s alternate identity.  It started off as a game a year+ back, and AmyG has sort of gained a life of her own.  Anyway, FlatAmyG spent a good deal of the summer with me “helping” me pack up to move from England to the United States.  Obviously I had to get her out and about occasionally.  One day I took her into London and we visited The Tower.  Now, the very special thing about Amy is that, as her name might imply, she’s got a thing for Glitter.  Ideally they’d be Pink, but…. I have this slight allergy to Pink.  That and, the livery of the Tower Yeomen is Blue and Red.  Couldn’t really put Pink on a Blue/Red LO, could I?

Anyway, this is what I ended up with:

Very strangely for me, I managed to keep very close to the original sketch!  I felt very proud of myself for that.  However, I did change it in a few ways.  You’ll note that I used a background image for the large central square (there actually is an outer block on the template.  It’s just that it’s white, so it doesn’t necessarily show up here.)  It was my favourite photo of AmyG from the day, but it didn’t work in any of the blocked spaces.  This is one of the reasons I love Digi!  You can do awesome things like that.  The second change was that I didn’t do any real journaling, though I did keep the title more or less in the location of the title from the sketch.  It was the obvious place.  The 3rd change was that I added a background texture border along the right hand side.  4th, I added an additional embellie on the title…. couldn’t resist!  I had to use a masking layer to remove the heart under the crown, but I think the effect turned out awesome!  5th, I added a triple layer mat to both the photo block in the right hand corner, and the background focal image.   6th, I added the date stamp to the right hand corner of the title.  Finally, I changed the circles/rectangle from the sketch into the awesome circle embellie from Katie Periet.  I love these fun sparklie embellies she’s created.  Both the circles and the crown are from Kate Periet’s SWAK collection.

Ok, now for a materials list:

• Paper: Cream – Michelle Martin’s Maskros Pack (designergigitals.com)
• Embellies: Circles/Crown – Katie Periet’s SWAK Collection (designergigitals.com), Ribbons – Katie Periet’s Cremerie Fruits Noirs Pack (designergigitals.com), Postmark – Katie Periet’s Make Your Own Postmark Set (designergigitals.com)
• Fonts: Medici Text, Pea Mary, Old Typewriter.
• Textures: BasicGrey Lucky Collection.

Now, the 2nd part of the challenge – the card!

Yeah, this is quite different from the sketch!  Also, it’s paper, not Digi.  If you saw my post from earlier in the week, you know that this is the card I made to accompany the Airline Ticket my sister asked me to make for her Mother-In-Law.  (Go check it out.  It’s pretty awesome.  And there’s a template (free!) for that, too.)

Ok, so my changes.  First of all, I’m not a great card maker.  My brain doesn’t have much practice at it, mostly because I’m so pressed for time, I’d rather spend the time I do have on LOs, not cards.  But, scrapping, not card making, is my thing.  If you’re a card maker, awesome!  I salute you.  So, the thing of it is, this is much more how I use templates.  A rough guide for where to start.  You can sort of see a bit of the original sketch in the card.  I added the stitched border to the left hand side and top to reflect the same border as the sketch’s background and inside square.  The inked edge is the outside paper.  The stamped image is my nod to the inside square.  The tag is my nod to the photo block.  The button/twine is a sort of circle embellie, though you’ll notice that it’s migrated from the right hand side of the block to the left, and is completely missing off the top left corner!  And the airplane?  That’s just me!  Extremely different.  But, it’s what worked with the materials I had at hand!  I actually think it turned out very nice.

Materials used:

• Ink – Him Holtz Distress Ink – Frayed Burlap.  Tsukineko’s Sheer Shimmer Spritz – Sparkle.  Tsukineko’s VersaMagic Chalk Ink – Night Sky.  Blue Pen – No idea.  Just a blue jell pen I had sitting around.
• Twine – Martha Stewart’s Baking Twine.
• Button – No idea.  Just a blue button I had sitting around.
• Airplane – EKSuccess’s Sticko – Travel Pictograms.
• Tag – 7Gypsies – 97% Complete Black & White Tags Assortment.
• Stamp – Glitz’s Clear Stamps – Distressing Set 3.

And now for the fun part!  If you leave me a comment here, you’re entered to win an RAK!  If you post a link to my blog on your blog, or on your Facebook account, you’ve got a second chance.  If you become (or already are) a follower (you can sign up for email notification along the right hand side of the blog), you’ll get a 3rd chance.  Good luck everyone!  Don’t forget to let me know in the comments if you do either the link or the follow step.

Thanks for stopping off here, and on to your next stop: Janice!

Don’t forget, if you get lost, you can always pop back to Amanda’s blog and figure it out from there.