At Gairloch Beach

Hello and welcome back to my blog! It's the first of September today, which means that it's time for a brand new sketch challenge on the Stick It Down blog! Here is this month's double page sketch:

And here is my layout based on the sketch:

I dug out some old photos of the kids - these were taken when holidaying up in rural Scotland in the springtime a few years ago. Even though palm trees and tropical flowers didn't strictly match my photos in theme, I decided to go with the Simple Stories Simple Vintage Coastal collection, as the colours were so complimentary to my photos!

I used two of the same patterned papers for the background, but I flipped one over, so both sides are visible. Originally I was going to cover up the palm trees, but in the last minute I decided that it actually worked quite well with the sketch, so decided to work around them, and treat them as a focal point. This meant that I had to flip the sketch.

Next, I placed the photos on the layout on both sides, matting them onto strips of paper. I used a paper punch to create decorative edges on some of them, and carried some of the patterned papers over from one side to the other, to create cohesion between the two sides.

I added the title on the right hand side - I used an old Cocoa Vanilla Studio alpha sticker sheet for this, which was just perfect in colour and style. I added the embellishment clusters - one small cluster on the left side, and one long elongated cluster underneath the photo on the right. I used similar elements and colours on both sides, to create cohesion. I added a couple of embellishment pieces here and there around the main photo on the right, to fill up some of the empty spaces (no journaling this month, so plenty of space to play with).

Finally, I dropped some gold ink splatters around the embellishment cluster, to complete the layout.

I hope you like my layout - if you want to see how it all came together, here is a super-quick process video. Don't forget to check back to the Stick It Down blog for new inspiration each week! Thanks for visiting!