Sketch It Out! LOAD213 Day One

Sketch by Candace Lawlor for Scrapbook News and Review Magazine

It's the first day of LOAD aka layout a day. I decided to kick it off by using a sketch. It sure makes things a whole lot easier sometimes.


Our prompt today centered around communicating without words. At first, I was quite stumped. I journal on every layout and almost always have a title. To get myself thinking, I started sorting through my photos. I came across a simple portrait of my son around the age of 4 and it hit me. I would scrap the number 4 and use stars with boy themed papers to tell my story.

I decided to make a hybrid layout. I printed off a few papers in a 4x6 size. I don't need a large amount of the patterned paper, so this allowed me to reduce waste and save ink. I also chose a digital Project Life card from the Cobalt collection and some tickets from a JBS Mercantile collection.

One of the issues with printing digital supplies can be that they look flat or unrealistic. To make my tickets look a bit more like the real thing, I used my hole punch to cut out the spaces between the tickets.

Now that my page elements are cut out, I can place them on the canvas. I want an idea of how they will fit so that I can build my background around them. Since ink and modeling paste get a bit messy, I traced the photos and papers with a pencil. Now I know where they will sit on the layout.

After removing the photos and patterned papers, I begin using stencils to ink the number 4 onto the canvas. You can see my pencil line, very faintly here. I want some of the numbers to run off the edge of the canvas and under the patterned paper and photos. However, knowing where I will be placing the photo and papers means that I don't have to make a background on the entire canvas. This is a big time saver for me and also saves me on supplies.

After adding in a custom stamp and allowing everything to dry, I can begin layering my patterned paper and photos onto my canvas. As you can see here, I don't use full shapes underneath the layers. I like to get the most of my supplies and no one will know about the partial circle once everything else has been layered on top.

Now it's simply a matter of building the layers upwards. I add the photo and the other layout elements. Before you know it, the layout will be done.

Four by Christy Strickler Supplies Cardstock: Colorbok; Digital Papers: ACDigitals.com, Julie Billingsley for Sweet Shoppe Designs, JBS Mercantile; Brad: We R Memory Keepers;Ink: Ranger; Modeling Paste: Liquitex; Other: Stencils, acrylic paint, hand made stamp, Glossy Accents; submitted to Simon Say Stamp weekly challenge and to Layout Link Love at the Purple Mailbox. 



There are a few things I wish I had added for a more polished look. My latest trend has been to matte everything with black cardstock and that would have looked nice here. Overall though, I think it's a cute layout of my son around age four.



If you are participating in LOAD213, then you might want to try using sketches. Feel free to pop over to my sketch pinboard for a few of my favorites.

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