"This is us" - Stuck?! Sketches

Have you seen it on facebook or instagram? Or have you read the Stuck?! Sketches Design Team announcement? I'm still pinching myself because I made it! I'm so excited to be part of such a talented group of designers for the next six months. Above you can see the first sketch that will start our term. And below is my interpretation of it.

As you can see, I turned the sketch around. I thought the pictures worked better arranged in this order. And then I started working on the layout. It took me quite a while and I like the way it turned out but I'm not absolutely in love with it. I often have that happen when I want something to be extra super duper special like in this case, my very first layout for this team.
Did you see? I handcut the scallops, they turned out a bit wonky which gives them a whimsical touch. And I used so many things that were in my stash for quite some time. And that totally makes me happy: I used the blue glitter alphas, that came in my very first warehouse sale box. When I received those, I was bummed. These were my very first thickers and then blue glitter?! But here they worked! Yay! I used more of the black phrase thickers that I just had to have and then was too intimidated to actually use. And I used more of those chipboard speech bubbles, they were in that same warehouse sale box. Now that my stash is a bit bigger, I can finally smile about those first purchases, that were a total waste of money, and pull them out, use some and purge the rest.

In the bottom cluster I added the "Say Cheese" flair from feed your craft, that I wasn't able to use on one of my previous layouts. It worked perfectly because the photos were taken when my youngest discovered my old DSLR that I hadn't used in several years. He insisted on charging the batteries and adding a memory card and was the family photographer for several weeks during the summer. He brought out the tripod and we took our very first family photo on a timer. We had so much fun taking the photos and watching him setting it all up.

When creating clusters I try to add the same elements to each cluster, in this layout I made sure there were cameras, chipboard as well as puffy stickers in each one of them. This is such an easy way to make a layout look more cohesive. Doesn't this "my tribe" sticker just go well with the theme of the layout? I layered it on top of the chipboard speech bubble that houses the date.

I started working on the top photo cluster after I had a basic idea of the elements on the left. I didn't really know where to start, so I pulled in all the papers that I used previously. For my journaling I added one label to each of the photo elements.

We'd love for you to play along with this sketch. If you do, please be sure and link your project up to the site. You'll have a chance to win a prize from one of these two sponsors this month.

Here's a link to my process video if you'd like to take a closer peek at how the layout came together. Thanks so much and I hope you have a great day!