Pencil Lines: sketch 181

Here's the new Pencil Lines sketch:

We were sponsored by American Crafts this week.  Here is my interpretation of the sketch using American Crafts product:

Took a while for this layout to come together for me.  I felt a huge burst of freedom when I decided to let go of the floral element and large title from the sketch.  I had a really hard time working with the papers that were sent to me.  The patterns just weren't right for my style of scrapbooking.  The sketch is really soft and romantic, but the papers I got were bright and mildly masculine.  But luckily all the papers have beautiful plain colored reverse sides!

I painted the center section with gesso and fed it right into my typewriter once it had dried.  You can where I typed right over the seam of two papers meeting:

I used watercolor paint to sketch in a little doodled lace edge:

It helps to contain the mess of the gesso.  And you can see in the photo that I also stitched around the painted edge.

I layered two shades of yellow to create the sort of fish scale motif.

That flower and pin combo was a last minute addition. I didn't have any American Crafts embellishments, so I decided to make one.  I took a quilting pin that was sitting on my desk and sandwiched it between two hand cut flowers.  The addition of a little rhinestone and voila!  A perfect embellishment.  I think that little pull of red up to the top of the layout is important.

The sketch shows a pretty scalloped border around the inner square.  This is my interpretation:

It's masking tape ripped, ruffled, and stitched down.  I love the transparent cobweb-ish feeling it creates. 

I'm delighted that I was able to find a way to make these papers work for me!  And what's more, because I had to stretch  my creativity, I really enjoyed the process and I'm pleased with the result to boot!

Thanks for stopping by!