Inspiration Station - To sketch or not to sketch?

That IS the question... ;) I've been going to a lot of crops lately and have been hearing many talking of using sketches, how they use them, and even how they consider the exactitude of one's work to a sketch when voting on a crop sketch challenge. For me, the sketch remains one of the most important inspiration sources. I see sketches sometimes, and just by looking at them, I want to sprint to my scrap cave and go. To many, using sketches means following it to a "T" - designing their project so it looks exactly like the sketch. For others, it's a starting point - their creativity starts with the sketch, but takes a few turns along the way. For me, I think I'm somewhere in the middle - sometimes I want to design my project so it captures every single detail of the sketch and other times, it's all about getting that first idea to get my mojo going. At the end of the day, a sketch is exactly that - a sketch. It can stay the same or it can get twisted and contorted in countless versions. The main thing is to give credit where credit is due - if a sketch is used as is or as a starting point, it still remains a tool for your project just like patterned paper or alphas or etc., etc., etc.

For example, a few weekends ago, I attended a crop with a few friends. While packing, I kitted a few projects along with sketches I thought I would use to create. Like the one I revealed last week, some were done pretty much as per the sketch from which I was inspired (see here). However, for this week's layout, the end product totally diverted from its original source of inspiration...

And here is my initial source of inspiration, a sketch by Jenny G Evans for Creative Scrappers' recent Birthday Blog Hop:

Now, you need to understand that when I first set out to design with this sketch, I had every intention to have it look just, just like it. However, after having cut my patterned paper into the required pieces, the photo was not popping out as much as I wanted to. With this in mind, I chose particular elements of the sketch that I found worked with the photo I had on hand to work with and away I went, making it my own.

Used tons and tons and tons of Basic Grey's Kelly Purkey Mon Ami collection on this one (soon to be uploaded to the Let's Capture Our Memories store), but also added some American Crafts and October Afternoon alphas, Cosmo Cricket Tiny Text for my journalling, a Studio Calico gold sequin along with some small punched circles out of some Stampin' Up gold foil paper, stitching with some DMC floss after having poked holes through my layout with the very handy Tim Holtz ruler, flowers by Graphic 45 and Prima, and some stencilling using a mask by Memory Box and some StäzOn ink.

How about you? What do you think of the whole sketch discussion? I would love to hear your take on it. Please leave your thoughts below in the comments section or on our Facebook page right here.

Happy scrapping!