My Favorite Sketch

Years ago I used to scrap by the seat of my pants... I would spend hours and hours moving the pictures around on a blank page with no idea where I was going. Then one day I was introduced to Becky Higgins Sketches... I was resistant at first, that's just copying, I thought. But then I saw how it wasn't just copying, it was just giving my scrappin pals somewhere to start, and speeding up their work by tons! I still occasionally scrap by the seat of my pants, but normally I plan a layout from my trusty dusty collection of layouts... a three ring notebook that I have created collecting page maps and layouts and sketches from every corner of the scrappin world. I have sorted the layouts by number of photos, so its fairly simple to count the photos I want to use, and go to that section of my sketch book, then its simply matching them up, or finding something that sparks my creativity.
   Some people are concerned that their pages would begin to look like carbon copies, others ask me have I ever used the same layout more than once? My answer is yes, I have found that using a sketch does not make my pages carbon copies of each other, becasue I just use the layout as a basic place to start and go from there with my theme and my photos. This way it creates a different look every time. The following layout is one of my very favorite sketches from page maps.com. A friend of mine posted it for a challenge years ago, but I still use this one over and over again, and it comes out different every time. I will try to find some more of them to post for you but here is a start.