Lake Bled, Slovenia

Hey y'all!  How's your Monday going?

Today's layout is actually the very first one I made after arriving in Germany, after not getting to stamp or do any paper crafting for about three months.  If you ever have a spell like that where you can't stamp or scrap, do you feel like you need to do a warmup layout or card or something?  Because I feel like this is kind of a warmup layout for me.

I mean, I like it.  I love these pictures from Slovenia (read about our day trip here) and that patterned paper is one of my all-time favorites.  But since this was my first time scrapping in so long, I turned to my very favoritest most trusty sketch to put my layout together.  More on that in a minute.

Today's color palette includes Basic Black, More Mustard, Ruby Red, Always Artichoke, and Whisper White; all the colors are retired except black and white.  And honestly why did SU! get rid of black 12x12 cardstock?! So technically it's retired too.  Brown might be more expected for a fall layout, but I felt like the photos just needed that start black backdrop.
 
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Empire Alphabet Upper & Lower, Make a Difference, My Paper Pumpkin (leaves)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Always Artichoke, More Mustard, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Basic Black, More Mustard, Ruby Red, Thick Whisper White, Autumn Traditions DSP
Accessories:  None

Okay so back to that sketch thing.  I own this Becky Higgins book of sketches, I bought it in 2008 according to Amazon and I use it all the freaking time when I scrap.  There are some sketches that I doubt I'll ever use, and there are some that I've used two or three times, and then there's my very favorite sketch.  I'm not sure what makes this sketch so special, but I've used it a lot.  Because I was curious, I went through all my pictures of past layouts just to see how many times I've used this same sketch.  (Honestly I thought I'd done more!)  Since I typically scrap whatever strikes my fancy rather than chronologically, I can use this sketch several times in a row even and know the layouts won't be all together in my books.  But here, for your viewing pleasure, is a parade of layouts using the same sketch :)

This was one of the first layouts I did when we moved to Japan!  And I think it might have been the very first time I used this sketch.  America Town is a place in Okinawa.

Here's a trip to Amsterdam...

Oh look, same sketch in Wales...

Another Japan layout but it's in a different album from the first one.

Old pictures but I think I made this layout earlier this year or maybe last year.  I've been on a kick of using the Taffy Alphabet stamps.

Another Japan layout, I was extremely proud of this one at the time (I still like it).  It took a looooong time to hand-cut those letters for the title.

Hey, here's one from our honeymoon cruise in 2005.  But it gets its own album so won't be with that December 2005 layout above.

Here's a layout from St. Petersburg in Russia, and now that I think about it, it will go in the same album as the Beaumaris one from Wales.  But there's still lots of pages in between.

Aww, here's the little church that was half a block from our house in England.

Ooh hey, a Thanksgiving layout and another fall patterned paper that I adore.

As soon as I see the picture in the top left corner on this layout, my brain starts singing the Indiana Jones theme because that's the church they go in where X marks the spot in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Last one because I uploaded these alphabetically, I was surprised to discover I only used the sketch once in my China albums.

I did find a few more where I might have started out with something similar to the sketch, but then moved things around so it wasn't as recognizable.  But this was a fun excuse to look at the pictures of all my past scrapbook layouts.  Hope you enjoyed it as well!