God Bless America

There is a fun Add-On Sketch over at the Sketch Support website this week! This add-on sketch is intended to look like fireworks exploding in the sky, but could be altered into a number of different things.

Here is the sketch (go to the website to print it out):

For this sketch I kept trying to think outside the box but wasn't very successful. I originally was going to alter the fireworks to look like dandelions. It would have worked great except that I was using dandelion patterned paper on my layout and it just wasn't working for me. I'm sure my perfectionism was coming out in full force. ;)

Instead of dandelions I went with firecrackers! I don't have too many holiday decorations, so I thought that I would make myself a 4th of July decoration. Here is what I came up with:

I decorated the back of an 8x10 canvas. I did this once before for another design team and had so much fun with it. I painted both the front and the back of the canvas and then glued down all the different parts. I stuck to the firework sketch for the most part with a few variations. I love how the sketch is very detailed about how to stitch the sparklers. Worked perfectly for me and I used metallic DMC floss to make sure that they really did sparkle. :)

Variation #1 -  I added rectangle bases to my fireworks. They add some visual interest and ground the sparklers. So I guess now they are considered firecrackers instead of fireworks.

Variation #2 - Instead of stitching the firework stems I used aluminum wire. I stuck the wire into the pop dots under the rectangle bases and then cushioned the other end between two small pop dots that are covered by the center circles.