Hi, There, Stampers!
Sometimes I sit down at my work station and have no idea what I’m going to make. But I end up making something that I really like. My “secret”? Reach for a sketch. When you’re having a moment for lack of cardmaking ideas, reach for a sketch. Sketches are great for inspirational ideas. Get your supplies together and see what you come up with!
Where Did I Find the Sketch for Today’s Card?
My very first go-to spot for finding great sketches is a challenge website called, “Freshly Made Sketches.” Not only does it publish a sketch every week. It also has a great team of designers who publish their ideas in the same article where the sketch is published. It gets ever better. Like most challenge sites, there are tons of entries into the challenge. So not only do I get a sketch, I also get some more inspiration from the way others have used the sketch.
Oh, and it gets better! At the top of their home page, you can look at groups of 200 sketches all at once! Just click on any of the links, and you’ll have more sketches than you’ll probably use in a year!
Here’s the sketch I used. I clicked on the “Past Sketches 201-400” button. I loved most of the sketches. But this one caught my eye. I had some of the Country Floral Lane Designer Series Paper I used in my last two articles still out on my desk. And this just looked like it would be fun to use two of them.
I also clicked on the page where they originally published this sketch. I got the idea for the hearts grouping from one of the challenge samples. What fun I had with that. And I felt my creativity come back to life as I figured out how to arrange the hearts and what colors to use. I also found some sketches that used a dark mat behind the designer paper elements on the card. Adding the Night of Navy Cardstock to my card really makes those Balmy Blue and Petal Pink colors pop!
Don’t Forget – A Sketch Is Not Locked in Concrete
For my card above I did figure out just about the exact measurements that the sketch used. And I really like that layout. But in the same set of paper, there’s a print with bicycles that I’ve been dying to use. When I measured a bicycle, I found it was just too wide to fit in this exact sketch. So I did what many good challenge entrants do with a sketch. I changed the size!
That bike required that I use a 1-7/8″ wide piece of the paper. Once I got the width figured out I worked out how high I had to make each piece of the sketch to make it work. To make it work for a whole card, I created a Sweet Sorbet Cardstock layer 4″ wide by 5-1/4″ high. Then I took the four pieces and adhered to the cardstock about 1/8″ in from the edges. That left me with a red border around each of the pieces and a space between the short and long pieces that I could just cover up with the sentiment layer. I did let that layer hang over the edges just a bit in the spirit of the sketch. Oh, and I added some Sweet Sorbet dots from the 2022-2024 In Color Matte Decorative Dots.
Just Get Started!
Sometimes just looking at sketches gets you to where you’d like to be as far as creativity goes. You may see one feature of one sketch that you think would go well with a feature of another sketch. Put them together, and then you’re getting creative. So grab your stamps, ink and paper and get started!
Happy creating!
