stash size zero

Radio silence?

So. There hasn't been an update for a while.

I have been doing some re-thinking about my motivations for scrapbooking. What I enjoy, what I don't, when I produce stuff I like, when I just sit looking at stuff.

Scrapbooking stopped being fun for me, right around September. I realised early on that having too much stuff was causing me issues and I should  - I thought - try and use it up. So I started my 100 layouts/no purchases rule and then the blog. It went great at first, I was making pages, using up supplies and blogging it all.

But I still had So.Much.Stuff.

I was sick of it, sick of looking at stickers that I had got in early 2005 and still couldn't think of a use for, sick of having 200 photo corners and 20 different charms related to cats and sick mostly of thinking  'I bought it so I have to use it'. And then doing no pages because I was sick of it.

A couple of weeks ago I thought 'I'm totally blocked and I NEED some inspiration'. I went through all my old copies of CK and similar publications and cut out all the layouts I liked, especially those with products I already had, and glued them on to a4 sheets and filed them. Then I went  through all my paper, stickers, embellishments, tools etc and PURGED all the stuff i knew that - as much as I liked it or as long as I'd had it - I really didn't need it. No matter which kit, how much it cost, how far it had travelled if it didn't make me happy anymore I took it out of my stash. I now have a big pile of papers and stickers to give to friends who have started scrapbooking.

I went to ikea and got stuff to re-organise my scrap space. I have been taking the 'Get Organized, Be Inspired' class through BPS and I have the accompanying book. I have been thinking really hard about what I LIKE about scrapbooking. I have felt an enormous pressure since Toby was born to be a 'proper' scrapbooker, noting all details and journalling everything about him, which just isn't me at all. I like being a bit arty and random. I like making 'pretty' pages about not much. I also like really indepth journalling. I like everyday stuff. I like taking a picture at the park and saying 'picture at park' too.

I realised 'not buying' stuff isn't enough. Learning the process of how you scrapbook, learning why you make pages and actually ENJOYING the process of making pages is the only way to fully appreciate the stuff you have bought and to use it effectively.

I realised I had stalled because I didn't have much 'inspirational' product left - and that is part of my process. To love the things and use the things. This works the other way too. You can buy too much and not be inspired. Often this happens when we binge and it gets put away because it is too pretty to use.

I have purged, I have rearranged, I am working on an inspiring space to encompass my crafty, creative side. I have made a list of products that I use a lot and were lacking (and a list that I just don't really use) and - confession time - I made some big purchases. I didn't make it to 100 layouts BUT I did learn a lot about my process and about hoarding product and about inspiration.

I have, in effect, failed. Should I pull the blog down and start a new scrapping blog, afresh? I'm in two minds. But just as my scrap process and everything around it is having a fresh start  so I feel my scrap blog, my online scrap presence, should too.

I'll keep you posted.

Stash back to cash?

I'm doing a craft fair next week, the All Things Christmas Show in Hove Town Hall, on Dec 2nd, if you happen to be near by. I'm hoping to get some commissions for albums and so I'm working up a really simple 12x12 summer holiday album using some old but very appropriate Basic Grey and a friend's photos. This reminded me of a valuable lesson - my friend doesn't know or care which release BG I'm using, I hope he'll just like the album. Older stash used for gifts is totally cool - set it off with something new and it gets a whole other lease of life.

Here are two albums I've made for the fair - which don't count for here because I totally bought these albums with the fair in mind and not me.

Other things I'm cooking up - Basic Grey Christmas release paper purses for the tree to hold gift cards, recycled notebooks, kraft wrapping paper, stamped cards and gift tags, more word albums and a nervous breakdown. No, really.

Out of sight, out of mind?

Some of my best layouts come from using up scraps of stuff left over from other projects.
At the moment I'm making lots of little gift bags with some delicious Basic Grey Christmas papers (I did buy them but they are for a craft fair not for me, more's the pity!) so I have lots of little scraps around and I'm already picturing some adorable Christmas cards and tags from the leftovers. I always seem to use the stuff out on my desk for other purposes too.

Perhaps a restriction of choice breeds ingenuity and creativity. Or I'm lazy. Either way, here are my top tips for using stash up if you are an 'out of sight, out of mind' scrapper.

1) Keep a basket out of things you really like. No themes, no co-ordinating products, just stuff you think 'mmmmn, I should use that' when you run across it.

2) Try and use the same products for 2 or 3 products - a bit like when you get a kit. Try and make your own kit out of your stash and use as many of those scrap bits as possible.

3)Repurpose or mix'n'match. Use a combination of stamps, die cuts and bought alphabets to make titles and use up those letters. Make up serendipity squares of patterned paper for new backgrounds.

4)Purge, purge, purge. Shocking I know, but if you have too much to remember you are never going to use it all. So get rid of the stash that really doesn't move you at all. The stuff you got in a swap that you just feel 'meh' about. The last piece of that patterned paper from a kit circa 2005. Then you can have a lovely big basket out of all the stuff you found while purging! It'll be like a trip to your very own scrapbook shop.

#29 State of the Union

I'm not a big yellow fan but i was totally drawn to this bright cardstock. I'm all for using stuff in abundance so it gave me a nice excuse to dig out some long lost yellow embellishments.
This layout is a loose timeline of my relationship with Paul but it was really a layout done to experiment with white space, or yellow space in this case. A special note: my husband requested the card the 3 of clubs as it has special significance to him, which is pretty sweet.

heidi swapp - clocks, credit card phrases and scrapbook tape
american crafts - patterned paper
prima - flowers
making memories - brads and metal embellishments
doodlebug - large silk blooms
queen and co - white plastic flower
creative imaginations - filmstrip
paperchase - yellow and black brocade badge
other - buttons, domino, flatback gems.

#28 Photobooth says green

This was more an art journal experiment than anything else. I was too late to enter 'Last Scrapper Standing' but I really wanted to print some transparencies and have a play, inspired by their transparency challenge. I never scrap 8.5x11 so that was fun.

8 transparencies, printed from designfruit.com's Fresh foliage brush set and  a Rhonna Farrer Frame brush.

from Top Left clockwise:
blue corner piece
round green frame
green corner piece
green ivyleaves that sit to the left of the photo
green vyleaves that sit under and either side of the photo
blue right bottom corner weed
blue left corner dandelion piece
blue foliage frame sitting over the photo

Hamblys rub-on pointing hands
Prima flowers
Heidi swapp letters
American craft letter stickers
Stickle in turquoise
Ranger paint dauber in lettuce
Pentel white paint pen

Journalling reads:
New mac equals obligatory photobooth session.

#27 Toby Oscar Ford

I decided to concentrate on horizontal lines for this layout. It focuses on a very small copy of my 20 week scan photo (of my son, now a bubbly toddler!) and I didn't want the overall design to overwhelm the small scale picture. I felt a horizontal-based layout would be the best choice because horizontal lines are aesthetically pleasing and calming to the eye.


The lines in the paper follow horizontal lines, including the lines in the blueprint paper, bringing the eye towards the two mini clipboards.
The bunch of five flowers and the two clipboards and three buttons create feature details that break up the horizontal lines to focus the eye on the bottom 3rd of the layout.

I also used elements from the colour class and dimension and texture class in my overall design but my focus was on the horizontal lines.

Journalling reads

'The day you became Toby Oscar Ford ...
... all creation is a a miracle, you just happen to be my personal miracle'.


There is further journalling on the back about the scan itself for Toby to read when he is older.

#26 A fishy tale

This was a bit of an experimental number, for the badgirlskits competition.
kaaaaaaay. This is a layout about how my one-year-old son thinks that the lady in the Starbucks logo is a fish. Everytime we are there is greets her like a long lost friend and does the babysign for 'fish'.


Texture and dimension - textured paint, sanded scrapbook tape, layered buttons, ribbons, fabric letters,lightly adhered die-cuts, tags, ripped paper and cardstock, velvet spots on gold textured paper and chipboard letters coated with UTEE for a glossy glassy finish as well as a leather flower.


The patterned paper in the top left is actually a photo of the mural in my local starbucks, printed on textured cardstock for pattern. The starbucks mug is from a leaflet I picked up on my last caffeine fix! The mini polaroids were made in photoshop.


Journaling reads:
It probably says too much about my parenting that if you wake up from a nap in Starbucks, you don't fret at all. You just sign 'fish' - cos you love "Mrs Fish" the Starbucks logo lady.
You actually can't make up your mind if the Starbucks lady is a fish or a bunny. You sign whatever you feel she looks most like today.
PS When we are in Starbucks you *love* to look at the logo on the wall. You always greet her like a long lost friend. Too much coffee for Mummy, you think?

not off the band wagon ... yet

Apologies for the lack of updates for 3 weeks. I have been scrapping but I'm also trying to make Christmas presents and Toby has been continuously either sick or doing that kid thing where as soon as they are not sick they run around and scream like banshees, leaving crumbling parents in their wake. Tonight I'll make an effort to get my Schitt together and upload a couple of layouts to here.

It's hard to stay on the bandwagon. Manufacturers are doing their level best to throw me off the path. BamPop are doing divine chipboard. I discovered the SIStv boutique. Elsie keeps bringing out cute lines. My local stationers has started selling American Crafts ribbons by the metre (I'll admit here and now I did buy some of that because frankly I don't want to put them off stocking stuff through fear that no-one buys it!).

In other news. brouhaha or otherwise, the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame entry is out again. This year I'm going to enter because I've made a half-hearted effort every other year since I've been scrapping so far. I've made a sketchbook and everything. I would like to state for the record I have no hope of winning -especially since this year they have gone from 75 'winners' to 10- but I fancy a consistent old push at something scrappy. I won't be putting these layouts up here, obv, but they might end up being layouts 90-100. If I EVER manage to scrapbook that much. So far this blog has told me I don't scrap anywhere near as much as I should or could.

Oh Mistress Organization and Father Time, if you could see me some way clear I'd be appreciating it.

#25 Play

This was a layout I made for the Top Designer competition at badgirlskits.com. The assignment was to use colour theory to create a mood for a layout. I wanted to create a sort of modern vintage feel to this layout, so i looked for stash that was brightly coloured but not  primary or modern. Everything I picked was already distressed or easily distressed by inks etc.

Ranger's Distress inks are my best friends - I rarely mat my photos in a conventional method so I often edge them with ink to make them pop off the page - and here practically everything was edged with 'vintage photo' ink and a foam smudgy thingy. This meant that anything too blue - like the bampop birdy cut outs - could be edged and made a more turquoise colour. I used a frame stamp, that matched the frame diecut, and layered the two. I also broke into my ribbon and buttons stash to use some vintage style notions.

Paper - daisyd's
cutouts - bampop birdies and frame, daisyd's vintage postcard
stamps - bampop frame and Making Memories rummage magnetic letters and magnetic shapes
letters- basic grey fruitcake monograms
rubon alphabet - american crafts, ned jr
ribbons - chatterbox, all my memories
tag - recycled from rusty pickle packaging
buttons - assorted from thrift store
ink - Rangers distress ink in vintage photo, ink it up copper and copper embossing powder.

#24 Have baby, can travel

Another part lift inspired by an old layout I spotted in a cutout from CK. (sorry, sorry for the lack of credit, if I knew I'd be announcing this to the world I'd have taken better notes!)  I got this paper salon paper in a kit and thought 'oh. bum'. It's diamonds, my least favourite pattern, its bold.So when I spotted someone else who had used the paper as a big strip, with ripped cardstock and rubons as accents, I went right ahead and lifted it for my album. The rubons were from a half used fancypants sheet that I just wanted used up, and the two sets of stickers were sat on my desks from earlier projects.

If anything, this plan to do 100 layouts has told me that the reason I don't use a lot of my stuff is I'm very much an 'out of sight, out of mind' scrapper. I use what's on my desk and very rarely do I seek stuff out. My next rambling musing will cover my thoughts on this and what i'm trying to do on it.

One little touch I'm proud of is adding the little red truck to the centre of the flower and the red heart at the bottom. Together they make a way of leading your eye from the photo (with Toby's red bib) down to the journaling. Don't get me wrong. This isn't ever going to be an award-winning layout of style and finesse, but then I was recording my son's pushchair so how chic does it need to be?

stickers - american craft gumbo and KI memories cookie cutter
coasterboard letters - gin x
rubons - fancy pants
paper -paper salon
chipboard heart - heidi swapp
red metal tag - karen foster
green suede flowers- w r memory keepers