Want to get more mileage from a sketch?

Have you checked out the latest sketch challenge on the forum? You'll notice that my collaborator Dana and I cooked up a special treat for this one - I used her awesome layout to create the June 6 sketch!

Here is the sketch:

And here is her page, Hot Summer Days:

Now, I know a lot of you love working with sketches, but how many different pages do you think you can get from one sketch? Well, I decided to use the sketch above to create a page - but with a twist! That is, a 90-degree twist to the left. Here is my page, Dig This, featuring the totally fun and bright Quick Quotes - Good Times paper line, Scenic Route chipboard alphas, and a fun little rub-on from this Scenic Route sheet:

My page is based on the original sketch, turned 90-degrees to the left:



Naturally, I rearranged a few of the elements in order to make the design flow well in the new configuration, but I was still guided by the original sketch.

So how many other ways can you think of to rearrange a sketch and come up with a whole new page design? Well, I could turn the original sketch 90-degrees to the right:

Or turn it 180 degrees:

Or instead of turning it, try flipping it! Here is the sketch flipped horizontally:

And here it is flipped vertically (notice that flipping it vertically gives a slightly different effect than rotating it 180 degrees):

Not enough options for you yet? Well, now start combining the above transformations for even more page designs! For example, here is the sketch after being first flipped vertically, and then rotated to the left:

But hey, combine the transformations in a different order and you get yet another page option! This is what happens when I first rotate left, and then flip vertically:

You can imagine how many different, new page designs you can achieve this way!

Finally, if you love a sketch but you have lots of picture you want to scrap on the layout, you can always convert a one-page sketch to a 2-page layout. Here is just one option for this sketch:

Of course, there could be lots of other ways to extend the sketch to 2-pages... maybe start with one of the rotation/transformations above, and go from there.

Hopefully this have given you some ideas for ways to get even more mileage from your sketches! I would love to see some examples for this month's Sketch Challenge that utilize some of these tips for modifying the sketch and letting it go even further toward inspiring your creativity! Have fun!

- Debbie