The Weekly Pep Talk is a video podcast series designed to help you find more time for scrapbooking and use it well. Learn more in our free guide.
In this week’s pep talk, I want to debunk the myth that you have feel naturally creative to be a scrapbooker. Creating great pages can be faked (in a good way!) and it can be learned. Watch this video to find out if you should check out Debbie Hodge’s free class: Design Principles for the Scrapbook Page. Subscribers may need to visit the website to view the video.
Your Weekly Pep Talk
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It’s your turn to talk! Do you ever feel like you’re not creative enough? What’s your favorite way to work through that feeling?
I have such trouble getting started because I don’t feel creative. Sometimes even looking at sketches turns into a rabbit hole. I am trying to get faster and just pick the first one I like and going with it. I should use my timer!
I tend to go in this order:
– select photos for story
– decide size of page
– select products that go well enough with the photos (micro kit)
– decide on basic page design (where you would bring in a sketch), building as I go
– embellishments and journaling in the space I left for it
One of the things stopping me is having an assignment that I don’t necessarily have the tools for. I’m making eight greeting cards for our gift basket to be auctioned off at TOPS NM State Recognition Day – but the theme is “How the Waist Was Won”. I’ve made one card with a cowboy hat on it. I have a boot stamp that I want to use on a “Have a Kickin’ Day” and at least one stamp with a dressmaker form that I may say “You’re in Good Form Now” on. But I haven’t made those two or figured out the other five. But writing this out may have helped some. Thanks Jennifer.
Do you perhaps tend to take on too many assignments that you aren’t excited about or not equipped for? Maybe looking at it from that angle will help you. You can definitely serve organizations in ways that are different from your hobby.
I let myself fall into this trap so often. While working on a project, or even before I begin a project, I tell myself that I’m not creative enough because my layouts don’t look like something in a magazine, on Pinterest, or on someone else’s blog. I have to remind myself that the creative piece of scrapbooking for me is just for me. The story and photos are what is important to my family. One of my favorite ways to get out of this mindset is to go back and look through my old scrapbooks, especially with my children, and relive the stories and memories I have captured.
I did this while putting together the April Focus lesson. When I look at my older layouts with the eye of someone in the industry, I think about how dreadful they are. When I look at them in terms of the stories they share, it doesn’t matter that I used a really ugly quickpage but that it’s a photo from a moment in time that will never happen again and my own thoughts and feeling are documented with it.
You are right on the mark. When I’m feeling stuck, I tell myself:
“just do it” ; and in so doing a spark ignites. The result may be good or it may be lousy, but it works to get forward movement and eventually the result is okay.
That’s is what I’m doing right now, I like the way you said: looking at them in terms of the stories they share;
that’s good for me for my Before my story but it’s more difficult when it’s a new layout I have to make embellishments or decorate.
I would love not to have all the Christmas décorations to make for my old aged organization. We have three suppers and I have my Artisan-Art Christmas exhibition on nov. 22-23.
I’m having a hard time to keep time for my scrapbooking. So I try to scrapbook without thinking if it’s beautiful or if it’s done and I’.m glad to finish some pages.
I used to feel like that in the past, that’s why I blocked my creativity for so long. Now I don’t anymore.