My Creative Sketches December Challenge - Getting Ready

I made this layout for the My Creative Sketches December Sketch Challenge. I loved this sketch as soon as I saw it! I decided to use the monthly kit from my LSS since I hadn't done anything with that yet. The papers were very bright so lent themselves well to being cut up into smaller pieces as in the sketch. I'm very pleased with how this turned out, and I love this photo of my daughter getting her makeup done for her year 12 formal. Hopefully soon I'll get to scrapping the photos of her all done up as well. She looked beautiful, but then I am biased!!

The papers in the kit are from the Kaisercraft Hopscotch collection on a kraft cardstock base. I inked around the edges of all the papers with either Cotton Candy or Lagoon exclusive ink from Close to my Heart. I layered the ribbons to make the line under the main photograph. I painted the chipboard swirl (I'm not sure of the maker) with TwinklingH2Os and raised it off the page with some foam tape. There was also a zipper in the kit and I cut that up and used it as a frame around the smaller picture. I added some floss to the button and a small bit of folded ribbon underneath. In my stash I found some old Kaisercraft letter stickers that matched the colour perfectly, added the pearls and I was done!

I hope you like it too and leave me a comment or two.

Till next time, happy days.

Mount Sonder

I found a new (to me) challenge site, called My Creative Sketches. Being a sketch based site of course it's right up my alley. Here's my layout for the March sketch.

I actually made a digital layout first, but didn’t like it much, so made another one the traditional way. I'm quite pleased with the result. This is the one I'm entering in the challenge (since you can only enter one layout). 



I used PSE to alter the picture first - layered a black and white photo on top of a colour one, then 'cut' a circle out of the B&W layer, to show the colour underneath. I did it in a circle to mimic the circles in the sketch.

The circle doilies are made from kaleidoscopes I made from a picture taken on the same walk so the colours are the same as the main photo. After printing them, I cut them out with the Cheery Lynn English Tea Party Doily die.  

All the papers I used are from my large TLC paper stash, except the background paper, not sure where that one came from. The other dies I used were the Cheery Lynn Exotic Butterfly small and Cheery Lynn FancifulFlourish. I also used a chipboard twigs 02 (CB505) by Scrapmatts that I coloured gold with a Sakura star gel pen, and some chipboard heart punches I had laying on my worktable from my last ATC project that I also coloured gold. The letter stickers are Kaisercraft, 'Loire Valley', also with some gold pen added!

Here are a few close ups and the kaleidoscope that I used.

In case you were wondering what the digital layout turned out like, here it is.

I used a kaleidoscope I made on that one too. The kaleidoscope was created from a photograph of a rock pool - seaweed/plants and shells. All the 'papers' on the digital layouts were made using colours selected from the photograph, and brushes. I love digital brushes! Here's what I used:

fonts - Euphemia and Angelic War.

brushes (from PSE presets) - Special effects brush (azalea), and natural brushes, plus one that I downloaded as a freebie quite some time ago -- House of 3 - RhonnaSwirlCluster8.

At left is the kaleidoscope for the digital layout.

That's it for now - till next time, happy days.

Francine