My Little Shop of Sketches Layout

This came out at Little Shop of Sketches last week so, if you follow their blog, you would have seen it by now. I am enjoying following sketches more & more now that I have a little bit of practice. It is a great starting point & soon takes on a life of it's own. I was feeling quite adventurous with this one so enjoyed playing with various different elements. I used some Basic Gray Plain paper for my backing cardstock(from the Sugared collection) as I bought the whole Paperpack a couple of weeks ago on special, as it is a 2008 range. Both the lime & the darker green plains are from the same range & I added in some white scalloped bazzill & a couple of medium sized doilies for good measure!

I inked the white bazzill with dark brown ink & used the top sheet of the paper pack as my journalling block (the front cover that shows all the papers included inside, in miniature rectangular blocks, as well as having some white space which I thought would be great to journal in). I cut the paper to the size I wanted & measured out the space I had to journal in, then printed my journalling on some A4 bond paper first. When I got it fitting the space nicely I stuck the printed paper ON TOP of the A4 bond paper - so that the area where I wanted the journalling was DIRECTLY ON TOP OF THE PRINTED JOURNALLING. Then I printed it AGAIN - now directly onto the printed paper. Use masking tape for this & it peels off easily.

You can't go wrong with this method if your paper is nice & flat & not too thick. Be careful, because it can get stuck in your printer when it is feeding through. If this happens your paper will be crunched - fine if you are doing a distressed layout but, if not, your paper will be ruined! Don't panic though - just pull the printer forward & open up the back - it is much easier to pull out the crumpled paper from here rather than the front.

The front cover paper I used had a watermark type floral print on it that I emphasized with the use of buttons - as the flower centres - and doodled the petals with a green milky then added some scrolls/leafy tendrils with my silver paint pen. I inked the area where the edge of the paper would rest against the white bazzill, with dark brown, in order that it stood out. My ink pad is quite dry now so I just swiped it directly onto the cardstock vertically & horizontally over the corner area.

Don't throw away your inkpads until they are bone dry as dryish ones are good for making subtle marks on backing papers, not only for edging. By the way, if yours, like mine, eventually decide to leave home & come away from their backing use tweezers to apply them. I keep a big pair of plastic tweezers in my ink case (can't remember where I got them - think they were part of one of Cami's games!) but regular ones are also fine - bigger is easier though so always be on the lookout, especially at Toys R Us ( a doctor's game is ringing faint bells???) For more control you need to actually be able to fold the inkpad in half - you'll get the hang of it in time - it's like eating with chopsticks - you improve with practice!

I used some Stickles glitter on the doilies (top & bottom). The buttons, antique lace, MM Lovenotes ticket & circular calendar, silver ribbon & green cotton lace are all from the Cocoa Daisy February/March kits. I also used 3 jelly elements from Love Elsie & a bling dot for the "I" in snowing (which uses SEI letters I've had for yonks) The rest of the title uses el cheapo Thickers-type self-adhesive alphas courtesy of Nat-Stat & available at CNA - not bad, they would make a killing if they could produce a large Thickers-type size. They are only R10 (USD1) per sheet, but lack vowels as usual so I have bought 4 sheets in each colour so I have lots of A's & E's & I must say they are coming in rather handy!)

If you do a quick count you will see that this layout has 6 layers (not including the backing paper) - to get all these layers in position takes a bit of planning (especially as I only work with double-sided permanent tape so have to get it right first time) but I think the end result is worth the effort. To acheive the same effect play around with your papers - cut them down to interesting proportions & layer everything up BEFORE sticking anything down - then remove everything layer by layer - face down next to your layout & start sticking from the bottom up. Either photograph your layout (cell phones are quick & easy for this) or make a little corner mark with a pencil where each paper is to be positioned, just remember to rub this out afterwards for a professional finish!

As the journalling is quite small it appears illegible in the photo so, to put you out of your curious misery, it reads:-

Title:- LET'S PRETEND IT'S SNOWING

Journalling:- Okay, so it's only hail, but, to me, it's snow! I have lived in Africa all my life, so, when I came across this I got overexcited! It was actually really scary as we got caught in a hailstorm driving back to Durban from Joburg in January 2009. We had to pull over & wait for it to pass...Made for a good photo op anyway (through the windscreen of course!)