You're my Sonshine

Good Morning!
This is Pam today with a layout.
I have recently started liking layouts and for the very first time decided to make my own sketch and play. I have never followed a sketch before in all the 4 - 6 layouts I made and just went as my brain dictated. But I decided that this time I would make a sketch to follow. I did change some elements but for the most part stuck to it. I am quite happy with the way the sketch and the layout turned out.
Here's a simple sketch I made

And the layout

I have used cartridge baby steps and the title is from Calligraphy collections and Plantin school book. Oval is from George and the labels are  from Lacey labels lite. The paper ribbon is from MS elegant cake welded repeatedly.  The pattern paper on left is from K&Company and the right one - the blue dotted one is from my mind's eye.It is so shiny and lovely! The solid papers - yellow, orange and blue are from DCWV and the green bits are from pack papers I got from Michaels (it was all pastel shades cut in different sizes and stacked up for 3 dollars)
Now I felt the embellishments - babies and the bowl cup and even the title was too small to cut properly as title was about 0.8 - 0.9 inches.  Even though the baby is big the layers was too small to piece. So I wanted to use markers and color them in. So I added the images for marker on one page in the Gypsy and in the 2nd page I added the cutting part. In case of baby- I added the image and used hide and contour to hide the cheeks. In case of cups and bowl I added all layers as a group and then used hide and contour to get rid of portions I didn't need and then placed everything one on top of another to form a whole image. Then on next page I placed the image for cut. Turn on the preview of previous page and you can also note down the x and y and use that  to manually place it after zooming to max. So you first put in marker (remember to protect you drawing area while changing marker and blade) and cut. Then DO NOT UNLOAD but RETURN TO DESIGN. Then change your marker for blade and then go to the next page and cut. Same thing for title though in this case I just placed a label shape on the 2nd page.

Here are some close ups

For the writing for tabs it is my handwriting but I had previously used fontifier and made a font out of my handwriting. I sized it in photoshop to about 10 points instead of 12 as I wanted the sentence to be about 2 1/2 - 3 inches long only . You can of course use word but I like photoshop . I then printed it out and cut it and glued it on to a green cardstock strip and glued it on.  Then I colored the pieces . Assembled the layout and added some brads and used some twine and that's a one page layout done :)
Thank you  for reading. I would love to read your sweet comments so do leave some.
 Have a great week!
Pam