THE LEMONADE STAND - Stick It Down August Single Page Challenge

Hi Everyone! I loved this month's single layout sketch challenge over at the Stick It Down blog and I was sure I would find it easy to make a layout based on it... oh, how wrong I was! I needed no less than three attempts to create this page:

Sadly the first two had to go in the bin, as I completely messed up with the inking... wet media has never been my strength... Luckily I only wasted a couple of card stock and one patterned paper, everything else was salvageable.

I decided to keep the background quite light, allowing the ink stains to be visible. As suggested on the sketch, I used different coloured inks. The one at the top of the page coordinates with the sky on the photo, the green coordinates with the grass.

I chose a photo for this layout which isn't a particularly good one, but it tells a story relevant to my life right now. I left details like the washing line and the slightly messy garden in the background - sometimes small details like these, so easily over-looked in the present, can bring back long forgotten memories in the future.

I've had these rubber and acetate citrus embellishments from an old Studio Calico kit for what seems like ages. I knew they would come handy one day...

Because the photo was at the top of the layout and I used white card stock at the bottom, I felt that the page was floating a little bit. I used a third area for inking and splattering at the bottom of the page - this time I used pink, to tie back to the top of the page.

After much contemplation I used a white puffy alphabet for the title - this was about the only letter set I could find in my stash to be remotely suitable for this page. I positioned the green ink so that it creates contrast for the title, allowing it to be easier to read. I ended up using a black pen for the journaling (mostly because my son's super-fine Stabilo pen set has gone missing, so I'm stranded with black pen only).

All in all, I love this sketch - I think it's very usable and I definitely will be basing other layouts on it... I might give the ink stains a miss next time though... ;-)