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Here we are in July already and it is time to welcome you again to sketchPLATE Saturday!
The sketchPLATE for July is based on the idea of a five-up rows of shaped / partial horizontal colour blocking composed of slightly irregular paper pieces with a vertical strip of four photos for visual contrast, drawing the layers of colour blocks together into a cohesive layout (yes that was a mouthful).
After last month’s idea for doilies I searched them out far and wide on the internet and, much to my delight, discovered that they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, including mini doilies.
So what I’ve ended up doing on this pencilled sketch page is use them as the foundation of the layered clusters of flowers and other embellishments in the diagonally opposite corners of the layout. To be honest, I kind of went a little nuts with them on the pencilling … and its a bit of a mess to be honest … but then that’s what sketching things out is all about. 
Again the process of morphing this hand drawn sketch into a digiscrapped layout was a very interesting labour of love. I seem to be taking a long time when creating layouts lately; but then I am actually designing elements and papers on the fly so to speak and so I am just accepting the whole process as part of artistic evolution.
Mostly using the One Day at a Time :: Petite Collection, in combination with a bunch of custom designed embellishments soon to be released as an add-on … this is what I came up with:
Lake Burley Griffin
This layout was a real treat to scrap. I used a hand drawn sketch to get started and the resulting layout, aka this page, then in turn evolved into sketchPLATE 0006.
These photos had been kind of taunting me for a while because of the colours; a full range of greens and blues in the sky, water and greeneries across the various backgrounds. The black swans were the key to a certain extent, so I opted to desaturate the photos.
Given that we were in Canberra, our nation’s capital, I decided to incorporate a slightly tribal theme into the embellishments and papers used whilst retaining a neutral background with the three visual columns of kraft paper pieces. Also, my family’s Mediterranean background shows through with some of the paper choices.
I love how this turned out.
Journaling reads:
20-April-2018 April on the road saw us in Canberra for a couple of weeks where we visited many of Australia’s most famous national exhibits, including both the Old and the New Parliament Houses, various galleries and other great institutions. We also stopped to have our lunch one day on the shores of the man made lake called Lake Burley Griffin. Of course, we had one of my special fully loaded pizza sandwiches. We also met a pair of beautiful black swans, as we walked around the lake after lunch. It was a perfect day.
I really like the slightly discordant balance of the two sides of the page; I kind of feel as though there is a strength emanating from the two diamond tag poles. The four photos definitely pull the five rows of paper/colour blocks together thus forming the basis for this month’s sketchPLATE.
Voila!
As shown in the preview, this sketchPLATE has the two doily clusters saved in flattened format. The layered .TIF and .PSD have some basic shadows applied as well.
Creating this layout I surprised myself with some new techniques developed to create the doily; you will probably be seeing more of those in the future. 
One thing is for sure, I will be focusing more closely on creating beautifully presented hand drawn sketches from now on. To be fair with myself though, this page was only the second one that evolved from a hand-drawn sketch, so I am cutting myself a little slack that it looks more than a little like a bunch of drunk chicken scrawls!
Moving on from the drunk chicken scrawls … from this sketchPLATE onwards, FREEbie downloads will run through the Design Shop rather than direct download via link in email. That system works fine enough I guess, however, it also adds a lot of additional and unnecessary behind the scenes admin to get them all set up.
So … simply use the coupon during checkout, valid until 24 July 2020, to grab the set for free from the Design Shop.
So after that exotic word salad of behind the scenes sweet and juicy bits, please be my guest and grab yourself a copy of this month’s sketchPLATE.
Aaaaand that‘s all for today. Please credit your post on Facebook or Instgram with the tag @anitarichardsdesigns so that we can see how your layout turned out.
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! 
