Jan 31st Sketch for SOUS

Here is another sketch that you can play along at SOUS. Personally for me this sketch was challenging. I see the work of all my fellow DT members and they totally rocked it. I decided to put a twist on the sketch. I decided to use the sketch for my embellishments only and use the photo as the background.

Here is the sketch:

Here is my layout:

I not only used the sketch mainly to create my embellishment clusters but I also did a mirror image of the sketch.

This is a photo of both my boys. I really love the saying that I used here, I thought it was appropriate for the picture. This picture was taken by my friend and colleague who is also a professional photographer. I love it. In order to showcase it, I really felt it was appropriate to use a giant photo. It is a 12x12 photo that I got developed at Costco. I then cut it down to a 11.25x11.25 photo.

For the embellishments I used a transparency by Webster's pages as my base. I then added letter stickers from American Crafts which are the first letters of the names of my kids, Arjun and Surya. I then added their age 9 and 3 with number stickers from Crate paper - DIY shop. The button , butterfly, 'fun day' chipboard, photo corners and the November label are all from Crate paper - DIY shop and Maggie Holmes collection. I also got the background paper and the transparency with my December Studio Calico Kit.

The saying that is printed on the photo is a .png file that was designed by Ali Edwards. You can buy it here. I love anything and everything that Ali designs. I totally admire her as a person and her design style. You can find her blog here. Also if you want to learn how to add .png files to your photo before printing them Ali has a great tutorial here.

I started with the sketch as an inspiration and added my own twist to it. Play along and show us at SOUS how you interpret this sketch. I am super curious to see your projects. Hey, and get ready for some fun on Feb 14th!!!

Remember that SOUS has monthly sponsors and this month's sponsors are SCRAP SHOTZ. You will be entered to win some fun goodies if you play along. Find more information here.

Have a great day!
~Neela

Jan 17th Sketch For SOUS

Can't believe that this is already my 4th post as DT for SOUS. Time sure does fly. The SOUS team is putting in a lot of effort to get sponsors for the contest every month and to publicize the contests. Do play along to win some gorgeous scrapbooking goodies and do pass on the word to your scrappy friends.
Here is the sketch for the Jan 17th  constest:

Instead of 2 photos as the sketch represents I chose to go with one large photo. The size of the photo that I printed is 8x6. In this sketch, the background is very interesting. Instead of cutting out the background shape, I decided to use the lucky 8 punch to create the shape. Below is how a Lucky 8 Punch looks. It is actually quite large. But I love the different combinations that you can cut out with this punch. I just did the inner cut.

Here is my layout:

I used the December kit from Studio Calico to create this layout. I find the purple very interesting. I used it as luckily my outfit has that exact same color. I decided to add punches of red with the starbursts as my son's outfit has red in it. The red and white stripes strip on the left and right side of the photo are from the bottom of the same paper but out. The number and the gold stripes are washi tapes from Studio Calico December Daily kit. I backed the water color diamond die cuts with some wood grain paper before adhering them to the photo. I embellished them with some purple and red enamel dots from MME. The wood veneer is also from Studio Calico. The 'I love U' and 'such a great day' are from Maggie Holmes' collection. The 'december' word in the right bottom, I stamped with Versamark and then embossed with gold embossing powder. The rhinestones at the top right are from Scrappn' supplies. And most importantly, I wrote my little bit of journaling on the left side along the line on the paper. Here is a close up of the embellishment cluster:

Hope you enjoyed looking at my work. Make sure to play along, I would love to see how you interpret the sketch.
Have a wonderful day!
~Neela

December Daily - Days 15 and 16

For day 15, I stuck to a single journal card. It was the day before our travel. So the only thing that happened that days was getting ready for the trip. So packing and packing....

For day 16, I incorporated some travel photos in LA airport and from the airplane itself. It was long journey to Costa Rica!

All elements are pretty much from the Studio Calico December Daily kit. The metal stars are from Basic Grey. I really like them and have used them on a lot of projects. The white stickers are from Kelly Purkey.

Here are some of the other December Daily pages:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 10

Day 13

Day 14

Cover and Intro Page

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 13

Still catching up on my December Daily. But I am determined to finish it. I am now working on my vacation pages from 16th to the 24th. These have been hardest to finish and incorporate. The size of my December Daily book is huge now. I need to be very careful not to add any more 3D embellishments.

Here is my layout for Day 13:

On this day, I got to know in the last minute that there was a chess tournament in Elwood school so I took Arjun there. He said he could have done better by the end of it. But I am happy he participated. Later that night I had a girls night out with my friends. We went to Hunger Games movie. I am happy to catch it before it disappeared from the theaters. We girls rarely do this and we need to do it more often. It is always fun to watch movies with friends. I absolutely loved the movie. I have read the series so it is really nice to see the movie stay true to the book.

For all the materials, I pretty much stuck to all the papers and embellishments from the December Daily kit from Studio Calico. I love the silver tape that I used on this page.

Here are some of the other December Daily pages:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 10

Day 14

Cover and Intro Page

Have a great day!

~Neela

Jan 3rd Sketch for SOUS

This is my third post for Stuck On U Sketches as their design team member. I am loving all the sketches that I get to create my layouts from. The very talented Nanne and Leah design the sketches and we get to play with them. I am also getting a lot of inspiration from my fellow design team members. From this month onwards, SOUS has monthly sponsors. So be sure to play in order to win. This months sponsor is Scrap Shotz.
Here is the sketch that I started from:

Loved the circles again. This time I did not stick to the sketch a 100% but used it as a starting point. I realized that the photo I selected did not work as a square so I kept it as a 4x6 photo.When I saw the circles I was immediately reminded of the 5ws theme that was the topic for one of the weeks in Ali Edward's Hello Story class. I think this is a great framework to tell a story. The 5 ws are WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY and WHO.

We had gone on a vacation to Costa Rica in December. So I used a photo from the trip. We were are all geared up to start our ziplining adventure. Even my 3 year old ended up ziplining and he was fearless. Costa Rica is a beautiful place and the people are great too. We had a wonderful time there.

Here is the layout that I made:

And here is the close up of the 5Ws:

Most of the products used to make this layout are from studio calico.

• Double Scoop kit 
• Wood veneer 
• Chipboard stickers
• Mist

The alphabet stickers are by designed by Kelly Purkey and the enamel dots are from MME.

I first misted the pink cardstock with various Mister Huey's mists. I then cut out the 5 circles using Silhouette with cut files that were provided in the Hello Story class. I stuck down the circles and embellished them with water colored wood veneer and some chipboard stickers. I wrote my story on each of the circle answering the 5ws. I then backed the photo with some patterned paper from the Double Scoop kit and then embellished it with some more water colored wood veneer. In the end I cut a stip of the beautiful paper that had the color gradient from blue to green and machine stitched it along the right. And that completed my layout. Hope you had fun checking it out. Do join us by playing along.

Have a great day!

~Neela

December Daily - Day 14

This was a very special day for me. Surya and Arjun have been learning dance for the past 6 months. Surya is learning intro to movement, ballet and tap and Arjun is learning Hip Hop. This was their performance day. Unfortunately, since Arjun broke his collar bone, he could not perform. Both he and I felt very bad but then you can't do much when things like this happen, you just have to let it go and learn to roll with it. This was not really the special part, the special part was for Surya to be on stage for the first time. Even during the rehearsals he couldn't wait for it to be his turn to be on stage. I love his enthusiasm and energy. I hope it continues as he grows up. It is a special gift to have. He was center Rudolph out of the 5 little Rudolphs. His dance academy performed NUTCRACKER TOYLAND.
More than anyone, I think I was so stressed trying to figure out if I needed to be backstage, if I could watch the show, who needs to have the tickets and on an on. In this process I even forgot to take my camera. Luckily I had my iphone and most of the photos on these pages are with the iphone. In the end, I decided that I should just stay backstage with him because I did not want to feel apprehensive and worried that I was not there. So I pretty much missed the whole show but I will get the DVD and watch it later.
We had to spend quite a bit of time backstage. There were about 20 little girls in that room with one little boy - Surya. Surya hated to put on the antlers. But I told him I would give him candy if he put them on for the 5 minutes on stage. I decided to save the candy wrapper in the book too.
Here are my pages:

I collected the handouts, tickets, candy wrapper and put them in the glassine bag. I then added little embellishments on the the bag itself. I stitched the glassine bag onto the page protector. 

I could not take a photo of Surya dressed up on day 14 but decided to dress him up again on the next day and take a couple of photos. I didn't put too many embellishments on this page except the gold doily and white ribbon. The peace circle is a digital file provided in the 25 days class by Studio calico. The letter stickers are by Kelly Purkey.

I love these selfies that I took of Surya and me while waiting for our turn in the dressing room. All of Surya's expressions do really reflect his fun personality. For this page I add some of the starbursts and added gold enamel dots.

On the right page, I added some transparent elements provided in the studio calico kit.

I took these photos of Surya again while waiting outside the dressing room. I love his expressions. The lone embellishment on this page is a little plastic Rudolph. This was given to him by his dance teacher during one of their practices as a reward for listening to her. 

Surya did very well on the stage. He remembered what he needed to do. Both of his teachers were with the 5 little kids on stage and making sure everything was fine.
After the entire show, the whole dance team had to take a bow. The Rudolphs were in the first row. Surya got so excited and gave a loud laugh after the bow. This made the whole audience laugh. It was so funny.
Hope you enjoyed looking at the pages. I definitely enjoyed telling the story.
Have a great day.
~Neela