Sketch Contest

Back in April, I attended an incredible retreat hosted by Two Scrapbook Friends. They had a bunch of fun games and prizes, as well as a sketch challenge. The sketch was created by Karan Gerber for Two Scrapbook Friends.

Using someone else's sketches isn't something I've done a lot (I think I've done it once before), so I decided it would be fun to try to do the sketch. I had no intention of submitting my layout for the contest... I don't usually do that type of stuff.

I had such a good time doing the sketch, and I was really pleased with the layout, but I still wasn't sure about entering the contest on the last day of the retreat. After some prompting from my amazing tablemates, I decided to just go for it and submitted the layout.

I was so impressed with the creativity shown by all of the other people who entered the contest. They had tons of entries, and they were so beautiful. It's amazing how everyone could use the same sketch as their starting point, and yet every layout was unique and special while still reflecting the sketch itself.

Here's the layout I entered into the contest... no one was more surprised than I was when I won!



I won two adorable totes from Creative Options. The first is a little "tackle box" that I will probably use to hold small embellishments. I have a match box in a much larger size - which is great, but can be heavy if filled with too many things.



The second tote is one I'd had my eye on for eons as it also matched my big rolling tote and the larger version of the one above that I'd won, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the money on it just so everything would "match". I was just thrilled to win it, and was happy I didn't chicken out of entering the contest.

Some more layouts

I had such fun scanning and merging the other layouts that I decided to scan a couple of others and post them.

This first layout is one I did a while ago for a challenge for an online crop I participated in. It was a pretty simple challenge to incorporate the wooden letter/number, and I had fun capturing some of the cute things about Alex at age 3.

I also edited the photos so they had a bit of a tint to them that I felt went well with the papers - it's essentially a sepia tint, but with a bit more of a soft tint to them. I played around with the layers opacity and converted the pictures to B&W before doing the sepia overlay and then softened things a bit as well. Not sure how much of that will show up in the scan as I'm finding a lot of the scans look uber saturated, which isn't always the case in the original.




The second layout is some pictures of my son from the photos we were sent with his adoption referral. I love, love, love these photos as they were some of the first we ever saw of him, but the colours were pretty bright so I hadn't scrapped them except in his adoption scrapbook. I came across some very cute baby papers and embellishments in colours I thought would work really well with these photos, so I did the layout and was pleased with how it turned out.

Scrapbooking Layouts

Well, I'm finally getting around to learning how to scan layouts and stitch them together. In the past, I'd always take pictures of my layouts, but I was never pleased with the results. I found that the image quality varied a great deal depending on how much natural light I had, plus I found there was always just a wee bit of distortion because it was almost impossible to take a photo 100% straight on, so the 12x12 layout never looked perfectly square and true.

Others recommended scanning, so I tried it out with my old trusty scanner. It can't scan a 12x12 page in one scan, but I have a stitch program for my camera, and it works perfectly with scanned images as well, so I'm pleased.

Now I just need to figure out the best way to post them to this blog.

This first layout is one I did awhile ago with some incredible papers by Fancy Pants from their About a Boy collection. Before doing the layout, I actually edited the photos in Photoshop Elements and put in some fun "grungy" words as I didn't want to have to use rub-ons for this layout.

It's a fun, vibrant layout and I loved also being able to use the Grungeboard as it inks up so well.




The second layout is one I did more recently of some pictures of my son from when he was still in Korea with his foster family. I edited the photos in photoshop to soften them a bit and also to put a sepia tint to them.

I used the Sweet Branch collection from Crate Paper and just loved how they had matching ribbons, chipboard, rub-ons and other amazing embellishments.




The final layout I scanned today is one I did at a recent retreat using the Beachy Keen papers from Bo Bunny. I used some fun pictures from our trip last summer to the Outer Banks with my family. I loved being able to use the bold orange chipboard, and also do some fun stiching on the layout.