Catching up at The Studio

Happy Monday! I love Mondays. I'm glad to see this Monday in particular because it signals the weekend is over. Between work, putting on a cub scout Pinewood Derby, another scout event, a water main breaking on my street, and my husband and son getting sick, I'm ready for a routine day. I was so busy playing nurse and napping when I could that I didn't share my latest layout for The Studio Challenges yesterday:

This challenge is a sketch challenge:

I took a little license with this sketch and basically shrunk the sketch and put it in the center of my page. What can I say, I really like my white space ;).

My grand achievement with this layout is the title. Do you see the word "love"? That is my handwriting, cut on my cameo. I am so excited to have pulled that off! I don't have one of those fancy tablets, so this is how I did it.

Using a felt-tip marker, I wrote the word on white printer paper. When I had one I liked, I scanned it. I uploaded the scan to the Silhouette Studio software, then used the trace function to trace the word. Next, I zoomed in to take care of all of the bumps and areas where the marker ink had scanned lighter than the rest. I clicked on the point feature then smoothed and deleted points until I liked what I saw. It was a little time consuming, but now that it's done, I can use the word over and over again without starting over.

You can find all the details for playing along with the challenge here. And if you're into recipe challenges, we also have a recipe challenge going this month. For this layout, I used kraft cardstock, at least one tag, two different alphas and mist or paint. Here's my take:

I love that a recipe challenge limits my choices right at the start. It's like working with a kit, or manufacturer design team supplies. A limited pool of materials gets me started on the project sooner, rather than stash-shopping.

As you can see, I followed the recipe exactly. I used kraft cardstock as my background, two tags act as my photo mat, two different alphas make up title, and I used mist.

I wanted the mist and the thread to be reminiscent of the waves and sea spray that my photo depicts, so I curled the thread to look like waves and splattered mist like water droplets.

As with any recipe, I like to add a bit of something special. For this page, it was this beautiful flair by A Flair for Buttons. I love the simple, typewriter font.

If you'd like to play along with the challenge, you can find all of the details here. Thanks for stopping by today! I hope your Monday is productive and happy :). Tessa