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Welcome to the all new sketchPLATE Saturdays!
It’s been far too many years and funnily enough, I really missed creating these little beasties!
For the folks who prefer listening to podcasts rather than reading blog posts I have included the sound byte here for you too, just click here or scroll to the bottom of the page to listen in. | ![]() |
A Sweet and Simple Template
Sweet and simple with this first one; I tried to keep things a little more minimalist within the scope of a full page photo background with blended overlay and a dynamic black and white >< colour interplay between two photos.
The Photos that Inspired the Layout
Kayaking the Franklin River
This was a morning of major significance as it marked the second day that we were on the road at the very beginning of our Great Australian Road Trip.
The day before we had explored Albany and the boys realised that they actually enjoyed being tourists although we were all rather uncomfortable as we had very little in the way of camping gear with us apart from some sleeping bags.
The raw file of the background photograph is nowhere near as spectacular as it appears here, but I was inspired to crank up the saturation and light levels after seeing the automatically generated Google® version … the addition of a paint stroke saturation overlay angled across the page added emphasis to the light of the sun rising reflecting from the water, of the new day, new beginnings, which is exactly what was happening for us as a family.
Desaturating the photograph of my sons as they were kayaking adds non-competitive differentiation between the focal points of the page and the use of minimalist elements keeps things calm in keeping with the calm feeling of peace emanating from the background photo.
The large photo dominating the background is to set the overall scene for the page. Then the smaller feature photograph, 100% desaturated to black and white in the instant photo frame, is used to give special focus to the subjects, aka the specific people who are the inspiration that prompted me to create the page.
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What is in the Download?
There are three download options for this sketchPLATE:
- the first .ZIP file has the .TIF file only;
- the second .ZIP has the .PSD file only;
- the third .ZIP has the separated .PNGs only.
Download just what you need or download them all, the choice is yours. 8D
So, without any further ado, here ’tis …
Edited 28 July 2020: FREEbie downloads of this template are now finished.
However, please feel free to purchase it in the Design Shop today.
See the Show Notes for the transcript and resources list.

If you publish your layouts on social media, please let me know. Share the link to your layout on Facebook or Instagram, tag me in the credits @anitarichardsdesigns, and I promise that I will take a look.
Lastly, and certainly not leastly, thank you! Thank you for participating in today’s sketchPLATE Saturday, part of our ongoing Digital Scrapbooking Projects & Inspiration series. The complete index for previous sketchPLATE Saturday Projects can be found on the sketchPLATE Saturdays home page.
Enjoy!
today I found your site with your beautiful sketchplates. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Claudia, you are most welcome!
Thank you so much!
My pleasure Olga – enjoy!
tysm for the sketch
You are very welcome, Antonia.
Lovely template – thanks
Thank you ~ you are very welcome Tracey.
Beautiful! I love the large photo spot! Thanks so much for sharing!!
You are most welcome Pam.