My Mind's Eye Sketch Challenge #22--April Showers

Here is this month's My Mind's Eye Blog Layout Sketch Challenge. The sketch is absolutely beautiful, and was created by Anam Stubbington. The theme this month is April Showers. Here is my take on it.

For once, I interpreted the sketch fairly literally. I used the gorgeous Stella and Rose collection. I loved how the orange enhanced her clothing, and the wood grain paper echoed the deck that she stands on. When deciding on a title, I kept ruminating on the theme of April showers. Soon, I had the Disney song from one of my Mom's favorite movies : :Drip, drip, drop little April Showers...." Kaitlyn looks so happy with the rain, that I found it rather approriate. I cut out most of the words from printed papers in the line. The others were from a lovely turquoise Core'dinations paper. I sanded it in the places that I needed it lighter for contrast. I also distressed most of the papers for added dimension.

I really enjoyed having intentional play with scallops. The orange scallop is actually part of the die cut paper piece. (I had to resist the urge to string a lovely ribbon through those holes, but I won't resist it next time.) I used My Mind's Eye ribbon as the scalloped embellishment featured on the sketch. Then, I used scallops in the hand made flower. Finally, when I cut the delicate doily from it's sheet, the edges became scalloped. (So much scallop fun!)

I then wanted to add a little something more to my layout. The "Drip, drip drop" was a little lost. I knew that the theme was April Showers, but aside from the photos, and the title, I was not really getting "rain". That is when I came up with the idea to make raindrops. It would add to the theme and make it a little different from the sketch. I used turquosie My Mind's Eye Lush 2 gemstone collection as the bottom of my drops. I made quick straight lines with light pencil right on the project. Then, I used my Bazzil InStitchz' Awl and mat to poke guide holes on the lines. I added the gems at the end of some of them, and poked guide holes around them. I stitched all of this with embroidery floss.

The flower center is a My Mind's Eye button that is really pretty. I was going to use the second one in the card sketch, but just don't think I can get it done this time.

This was really lots of fun. I am considering entering every month!