The Challenge of a Sketch

Working with sketches can be incredibly helpful.  They provide a great starting place, spark creativity and challenge me to go beyond my comfort zone.  Of course, working with a sketch can also be incredibly frustrating.  Sometimes it is really hard to design something that is 'me' when I'm working with someone else's sketch.

Such was the case with this sketch, designed by Heather Landry.

Heather challenged each of the Contributing Artists at Ideas for Scrapbookers to make a layout based on this sketch.  I accepted, as I really liked the sketch and love a challenge.  But there is so much going on in the sketch!  Banners AND flowers AND scallops AND triangles AND an oval AND an embellishment cluster.... awesome, but definitely not my style at all!  Heather's sample layout was super cute and totally inspirational, yet I really struggled to make a layout that was 'me'.

After some experimentation, I realized that the key to my success was going to be keeping all the various shapes and textures the same neutral color.  Here's what I made:

Overall, I like it.  It feels like something might be missing in the lower right corner (where the embellishment cluster was on the sketch), but nothing I tried worked.  So I'm calling it done!  The most important thing is that it tells the story and it is clearly based on the sketch, so in my book that is a success.