Sanity

I don't know about you, but I tend to be lazy when I'm creating, whether it's in the kitchen or the craft room. I don't want to have to guess at how I did something when I try to do it again. When I make cards and scrapbook layouts I tend to use a lot of sketch "recipes". But, sometimes, I'll design something myself, and like it enough that I'll want to repeat it in the future.

So, I've decided to create my own recipe book for my sketches. I'm storing them on the computer, but since I'm a hands-on kind of gal, I'll also be printing them to include in an organized binder. This will also make them super easy to take with me to crops like my other sketch books.

Now that Christmas is over and my cards are finally mailed, I thought I'd share my card design with you. The final product was changed somewhat as being too labor intensive for me to complete with all of the other holiday-related hoopla I had going on, but they were pretty similar. Feel free to use my sketch for your own use, but please do not share it in any way, other than to pass on a link to it here.

So, here's my prototype card:

In the end, I didn't sand my cardstocks to distress them and I opted to leave the red presents plain. Just didn't have time for the cutting, adhering, and sanding! Plus, most of the people on our list wouldn't have noticed. I also ran out of ribbon toward the end, so I just left that off on some.

All products/stamps used are from Close To My Heart, except the card bases, which came in a bulk pack from Michaels' (I think). I used the stamp set from the September card kit promotion and the Grinch quote from the Peace on Earth sayings stamp set.

The scalloped border was made using a corner rounder punch and mini hole punch. Would have been faster for my assembly line process if I'd had the Stampin' Up! scallop border punch; guess that's on my list of things to get...



Now, here's the sketch I created:

I just use MS Word and create a table of the size of my design. For a card, I can go full-scale. If I were designing a scrapbook page, I would go half-scale. I make enough columns & rows so I have one square per quarter inch.

These card bases were 5" x 6.5", so I had 20 columns and 26 rows. For rectangles, it's easy to highlight the cells and use the "merge cells" feature to "draw" them. I then used the line tool and the oval tool for other pieces. Since it's not always exact or perfect, I add text with the actual sizes of each piece and other little bits of info.

If you'd like to try this and need more help setting up your table, just contact me. I'm happy to help try and walk you through it.