One of the most difficult parts of papercrafting is sitting down at your desk and waiting for inspiration to strike from the heavens.  I’m sorry to report it usually doesn’t work like that?  Well, at least not in my case, so one of the things that I’ve found to be super helpful, is to use a “sketch”.  A sketch is just that…a layout to inspire your creativity and give your mojo a little jump start.  I’ve found using sketches are the ticket to make rubberstamping easier and more enjoyable for me.  To use a sketch, simply find a card you like in a current or past catalog, on pinterest or on a long running website for papercrafters, called splitcoaststampers.  I love that there are sketches posted on a weekly basis over there and with a simple click, you can have a boat load of sketches at your fingertips.  I was panicking for a card a class recently…(go figure, design time has been a little limited recently!) and so it was a sketch to the rescue.

I wanted to use the Nine Lives stamp set for my Critters class and was just not feeling the inspiration.  Enter SC743  and I was thrilled with the result.  We have the sweetest kitties that wander the yard and greet my stampers.  We have Minnie, Lloyd, and Leeda.   Now here’s your fun fact for the day.  Did you know that if the cat is a calico (meaning three colors) there is a 99.97% percent chance it’s  a female and if, on the long shot, it’s a male, it is almost certainly sterile.  That is definitely not the case with our dear little Leeda…she is the very sweet Momma kitty to quite a few batches of kittens and when I was running out of customers to give  kittens too, I knew it was time to take care of business and had her spayed.  Now, I’m desperately longing for kittens again because they were so incredibly funny and cute. Ella had those kittens so tame that they are almost infamous in their” begging for attention/dog-like qualities.”

So it was pretty fun to have a little card that was in Leeda’s honor.  Since the calico cat image was fairly “busy”, I didn’t want to overwhelm the card with busy DSP or complete with the calico cat focal point, so I used “texture” for interest in lieu of a patterned paper.  Now of note, there are quite a few of the embossing folders on the retiring list and I would encourage you to check them out before they are gone.  So what do you think?  Do you like working with sketches?   Leave me a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Product List