SWAT Drill #12 – Only Using Patterned Paper!

Good Saturday morning everyone! The sun is shining, my girls are coming home today and there’s a new challenge up on the SWAT blog. What a great way to start the weekend, right? Once I get through my shifts at work, that is. 🙁 That’s the one poopy thing about working retail AND having the availability I have. Evenings and weekends, baby, evenings and weekends.

Today’s layout talks a bit about my feelings of missing the particular trip to the beach that I’ve documented because I had to work. It’s tough! But on the bright side, my efforts at work have been recognized and rewarded with a promotion. I will become the newest Sales Leader at my store starting in August! Yay me!! It means a TON more responsibility for a little bit more pay. Ah well, I’ll take what I can get. It also means more predictable shifts, more guaranteed hours per week and the need to find a tiny bit of child care some nights. Sigh. You gotta take the good with the bad, right?

Well, I think I’ve taken you on a big enough tangent this morning. Shall we get back to the new SWAT challenge? This week we’ve got a sketch for you to follow and are challenging you to put away your card stock. Put it away, I say!! Grab your favourite patterned paper and work only with that!

Here’s the sketch.

And here’s what I came up with.

I have a hard time with large round elements as a base for my design so (please forgive me!) I completely ignored it this time. 🙂 It has been said before but bears repeating, sketches are meant as a jumping off points for your own designs. You can absolutely use them exactly as drawn and for those of you who may be just beginning on your Grand Scrapbooking Adventure, I’d  recommend doing just that. However, for those of us who have been around the 12×12 block a few times, sketches provide a fantastic way to jumpstart your own creativity. For that reason, and that reason only I say it is OK to make design choices that are not represented in a sketch. As long as the basic bones are there. If a person looking at your layout can’t see how you got there from the sketch, then you have a problem!!

Okay, lecture over. Here are some detail shots.

I fussy cut that title/doily element out of one of the SNAP pages I’ve been using on and off lately. The photos are matted on another. I thought it would be fun to incorporate the words already written on it into my title. It was easy to do just by adding letter stickers above and below the “Fresh Memories” phrase.

I took my journaling in a slightly different direction. Instead of only talking about who was there, what they were doing, etc, etc, etc, I talked about my feelings about NOT being there. And also about our general feelings about that particular beach. It’s fun to mix things up every now and then. I also think that when we look back on our pages 20 years from now, we are going to be more interested in the incidental things that were happening at that time rather than reading over and over again things like “today we went to Centennial Beach with the Campbell cousins and got covered in sand”. Ho hum!

The sketch called for a cluster of embellishments at the top of left of the page. Initially I was tempted to leave it off as my page was feeling pretty adequate without it. But I realized it would be a good way to introduce another pop of red to give me a visual triangle of red (right of the photos, in the title element and now this cluster). Creating visual triangles always makes me happy so I got busy. The circle of denim patterned paper was punched from the same SNAP page that I fussy cut the title from.

Now it’s your turn! Be sure to check out what the other super talented ladies at SWAT have created to inspire you, then break out your patterned paper and show us what you come up with. Can’t wait to see it. Have a great weekend!

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