Start with a Sketch...Definitely worth the Effort

Welcome to 'Start with a Sketch' which is a new video series here on my blog. I've been designing sketches just for my own personal use and I figured that I could make something out of them and make them into some sort of a series and thus 'Start with a Sketch' was born. I really love working with sketches and I almost always start with one. If anyone else out there is the same then please feel free to use my sketches as a starting point for your layouts.

This first sketch is typical of my usual style - a patterned paper background, mounted on something for a narrow, darker border. I occasionally use patterned paper for this (very much depends on the paper) but more regularly use card. This particular sketch also features three small portrait photos. I used to almost religiously use 6x4" prints, because that was the size I always had my photos printed in, but I've had a Selphy printer for about a year now which enables me to easily print smaller photos. I really love this feature and it means I can fit more photos on a layout, without the photos taking over.

I'm on a bit of a stash busting mission at the moment and pulled out some older Basic Grey papers to use for this sketch. I also show a few other papers in the video, some of which I ended up not using, plus I effectively added an extra layer of paper which was not present on the sketch (the two 6x4 journaling cards). I like how the photos take centre stage, how there are several of them (at least one of those wouldn't have gotten scrapped if they had been printed in 6x4), and how the design still shows of a lot of that fabulous background paper. If you were to use a less busy paper as your background, the you'd be able to get in a lot more journaling, something I didn't really think about until after I'd already started...!

Please feel free to use the sketch and share your layout below. It's just for fun and anyone can play along and I'd love you to join me.

Happy scrapping and thanks for stopping by