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The 24th sketch challenge has been posted at the SCRAP & MUSIC challenge blog! Head over to the site to grab the sketch, which I’m proud to have designed, and play along. This sketch came with the song “Better together” by Jack Johnson.

This is my final challenge with the Scrap & Music team. I have so enjoyed being a part of this new endeavor since it started a year ago. I’ve loved creating sketches for people around the world to use as inspiration in their scrapbooking. And designing with sketches and music together provides a real kick to the creative engine; I can highly recommend it if you haven’t tried it. Thank you to Scrap & Music for a great year! I wish them more and more success over time.

My layout

I really like how looking at the lyrics to a song can force me to pull a layout together that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. As I was reading the lyrics to “Better Together” the line “I believe in memories they look so, so pretty when I sleep” jumped out at me. Obviously, I believe in memory keeping, so I thought about using a set of photos on this page that I couldn’t capture again.

In the summer of 2000, my father’s side of the family planned a reunion. We held it at my cousin, Robbie’s house in Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful day of togetherness, and we took a lot of photos. But before the day ended we pulled together some smaller family photos. The left shot is of my father and his two sisters, Frances and Mary Lou. The right photo is of my parents, brother, Matt and me. Because we have lost both my dad and my Aunt Bubbles (Frances) since this reunion, these photos are precious.

Product/technique notes

I used a combination of products from We R Memory Keepers’ “Happy Campers” and Lily Bee Design’s “Family Portrait” collections to create this page. I created the title in the Silhouette software and cut it on my Cameo.

The challenge

The challenges on this blog involve following the sketch and using a title on your layout with a line from the provided music. Below I’ve included the video as well as the lyrics for this song:

“Better Together” by Jack Johnson

There’s no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing but I can try for your heart
Our dreams and they are made out of real things
Like a shoebox of photographs with sepia-toned loving
Love is the answer at least for most of the questions in my heart
Why are we here? And where do we go? And how come it’s so hard?
It’s not always easy, and sometimes life can be deceiving
I’ll tell you one thing, it’s always better when we’re together

Hum… It’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, we’ll look at the stars when we’re together
Well, it’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together

And all of these moments just might find their way into my dreams tonight
But I know that they’ll be gone when the morning light sings
Or brings new things for tomorrow night you see
That they’ll be gone too, too many things I have to do
But if all of these dreams might find their way into my day to day scene
I’d be under the impression I was somewhere in between
With only two, just me and you, not so many things we got to do
Or places we got to be, we’ll sit beneath the mango tree now

Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together
Hum… we’re somewhere in between together
Well, it’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together

I believe in memories they look so, so pretty when I sleep
And now when, when I wake up, you look so pretty sleeping next to me
But there is not enough time
And there is no song I could sing
And there is no combination of words I could say
But I will still tell you one thing
We’re better together