Ex-Squeeze Me?

My Second Reveal Day at Sketchabilities
Hey everyone, it is another reveal day over at Sketchabilities. If you ever use one of the sketches from the site, just upload it to the gallery and you'll get lots of positive comments. We promise to be nice and play well with others. Here is Sketch #46, you have until May 10th if you want to play along. We also just chose a guest design team member from the last reveal day's sketch. Hop on over and see 20 variations on this layout from the DT or peruse the gallery to see members' contribution and gain some scrappy inspiration for your own projects.

For this current sketch, I saw that mine was the only one that didn't use photos while the others are gorgeous layouts. Oh well, if life hands you lemons, then make some lemonade.

First May sketch at Sketchabilities

My unfinished take on the sketch

The Background

Several years ago, Kevin and I planted three little dwarf citrus trees along our driveway. They were around one foot high which were housed in these little black plastic tubs. Now they are over 7 feet tall,  growing over the roofline and are finally offering some fruit. 

Dwarf pink lemonade tree

It seemed a shame to let the lemons just fall off the tree and rot, especially after watching them grow from tiny 1cm green lemons. The ones pictured are pink lemonade lemons which do have a slight pinkish hue inside, but not that bright artificial pink associated with the drink. People are disappointed when you they cut one open, so I wanted to prevent you from suffering a similar fate in the future. 

I had previously shared about my ice tea tags, which is in daily use if you ever come and visit. I wanted to make something similar in concept but different in design. When I saw the sketch, I knew I wanted to use it to make a lemonade tag.

Sunshine Seeds patterned paper

The Process

Berrylicious fresh phrase die cuts

I immediately thought that the little seed packet designs on Imaginisce's Berrylicious papers could be cut and used in place of the photos. My favorite part of the collection is the "squeeze me" sentiment, so I paired up the two.

I followed the sketch, adding ex to the squeeze me sentiment so it would be like the lemon grimacing, "Ex-squeeze me?" at the thought of being made into lemonade. It that too cruel to anthropomorphize patterned paper? I then laminated the version shown above, folded it in half, added string in between the fold before I glued it together with Fabric-tac. I then embellished the top with some buttons and Memory Thread so there was more dimension and some roving vines. I made a little 3 x 3" tag instead of a 12 x 12" layout from the sketch. So you can use sketches for more purposes than the intended use. 

Tag in use

Completed Tag

Here is lemonade tag with his friend ice tea tag. When they get together, it's like a golfing sensation.

Arnold Palmer anyone? 

Take care,