Doing it just because ...

One of my frequently visited web sites is by Shimelle. I love her style and effervescent take on life - guess she reminds me a little of myself at a similar age. It's become a habit now to download her weekly sketches, thinking to myself that I'll get to do that one this week. Naturally the next sketch time rolls around and sees yet another layout less effort from me. Yet they are all there - happy little sketches and beautifully compiled sample layouts by Shimelle (her blog and 6x4 at 2peas) neatly put away in my inspiration file just waiting for me to get my act together and create something from them.

So I've turned over a new leaf. If I like them so much why aren't I doing them? Instead I'm doing challenge layouts from sketches I don't particularly like because they are from challenge sites I do like ... and I'm doing a lot of them every month. That is hard to understand - even for me lol! I don't need to do a challenge each month just because it is there, I don't have to work with a sketch I see little design merit in or use a prompt criteria I can't associate with, purely to say I’ve done “X” challenge layouts this month. I can pick and choose what I do and where I participate !! So I will …

Shimelle's scrapbooking-sketch-of-the-week this week was a sweet one ...
 
 

 

I'm in the process of sorting out my craft room - I have way too much stuff like most of us, I'm sure, and I felt it was time to purge some older supplies, embellishments and papers that have been sitting there unused for, in some cases, years.  So purge I did.  I now have a small pile of old papers sitting in a box ready to be donated somewhere useful and I am very happy with that.

I decide to challenge myself to use only what I was intending to throw away.  I pull out this hideously bright pink floral paper and flip it over - bright pink but plain on the other side, perfect for the base.  A pretty paper in the right colour combinations but with friendship quotes all over it which I've always bypassed because of this fact but really, does that matter?  No it doesn't - so use it.  A couple of strips of left over paper from my scrap box - set aside for cards which I know I'll never get to do.  Some die cut tags from a sheet that has sat in my stash for years and never been used because I'm not a huge tag fan.  A couple of buttons, a tiny flower and some alpha stickers and I'm finished ... and I love it!  A layout from cast off's!

The moral of the story ...

Do what you want to do because you want to do it.

Look again at things in your stash you have never used  .. and find ways to work with them.