Working with a Sketch

Every Sunday,  Studio Calico has a Sketch Challenge.

Every Sunday I participate in the Sketch Challenge.

Here is the layout sketch from last Sunday:

When I first started scrapping, I rarely used sketches.  I thought of it as cheating, like it meant that I wasn't being creative enough or something.  Truth be told, maybe I am being less creative when I use a sketch, but I don't really care.  If I am being too critical of myself and my creativity, I suck all the joy out of my favorite hobby.  What I like to do is keep it simple.  When I sit down to create and I don't have a clear vision of what I want to do, I reach for my folder of sketches.  I refuse to sit there and rack my brain for an original idea for hours.  I simply flip through my folder of sketches a pick one.  That's it.  Simple.

Here is my take on the sketch:

For this layout, I stuck to the ordinal sketch pretty closely because I loved it.  Sometimes when I use a sketch, it looks nothing like it.  I normally use sketches for inspiration instead of a blueprint.  But because I liked last week's sketch so much, I used it more like a blueprint for my design.  

Do you like to use sketches? Or do you think of sketches as cheating?