What is my absolute minimum scrapping kit?

I’m living out of two suitcases and a box at the moment because all of my house stuff is in a container about to take a long seatrip. When deciding what I needed with me for four or so months I knew that I would have to do some scrapbooking to maintain metal and creative sanity.

The big and hard question was what to keep. I have some plain card, two pens, some brads and stickers, a stencil sheet and glue. The three ‘tools’ I decided I would most want to use are those in the photo:

1. 
   
   my fiskar paper trimmer (which I use so much I’ve worn away the measurement grid in bottom corner),
   
   
   
2. 
   
   my crop-a-dile l because I like eyelets and to make mini-albums on jumprings (love all the colours they come in now)
   
   
   
3. 
   
   and my tweezers because they make stickers so much easier to use.
   
   
   

And the tool I most miss?  my corner rounder punch

What would be in your minimum toolkit?

Why I want to spin plates rather than juggle

image source

Over on Stacy Julian’s blog she has been talking about multi-tasking and getting organised. I love to have several project on the go and get bored if I do not have a range of things to work on or choose between. For me metaphors are important in how I think about things and organization of multiple tasks is a good example. Here is what I wrote in the recent Big Picture Scrapbooking class Me: the Abridged version by the wonderful Cathy Z.

juggling is often used as a metaphor for multi-tasking but I think plate-spinning is better. With juggling you touch each item briefly before throwing it up again and the whole impression is of only just being in control. With plate spinning you spend time on each plate at the start and then work on any that are faltering to keep them going. An added bonus is that with plate spinning you can have someone help with the ongoing work but this can’t happen in juggling.

A really important part of the plate spinning metaphor is the idea of giving a plate a small stroke to keep it going rather than having to put big work into all projects weekly. Here I have incorporated the idea of micro movements from SARK – the idea is to write a small thing on your list (5 seconds to 5 minutes) and then you do it and write the next micro movement . She explains it better in this interview. The idea is that you have a feeling of completing something.
The FlyLady idea of setting the timer for 2 or 5 or 15 minutes for a task is similar – the big job will get done but in small bits.
 
One of my favourite sayings is ‘how do you eat an elephant? – one bite at a time’

Yeah for the gorillapod

I travel by myself most the time and I do sometimes want photos of more of me than my feet. I could ask someone passing to take my photo, but that would involve a total personality change, believe me. Knowing how reluctant I am to ask a passerby to take my photo, I make a point of asking anyone I pass taking photos if they would like one with them in it.

So I’m left with using the self-timer and a tripod. My camera has a very easy to use 10 second timer. It also has ‘recognize when face is added’ function that I haven’t tried. For my birthday this year my sister gave me the awesome gorillapod.

Why do I love the gorrilapod?

• 
  
  its is light and fits into my camera case
  
  
  
• 
  
  it is very stable on all surfaces
  
  
  
• 
  
  I can angle the camera, it does not need to be looking straight ahead
  
  
  
• 
  
  it can hang off things too
  
  
  

Really if you take photos a lot or know someone who does then add this to the gift list.

blogging course with shimelle

What a coincidence. Monday last week I decided to start a creative blog and then on Friday when I was checking the scrapping blogs I read regularly there was shimelle offering an online course for blogging. Well I had to sign up. Looking forward to a mix of technological how to and creative inspiration plus forum with lots of like-minded people from across the world.

Course starts 3rd November – when I have several other projects starting so it will be busy – but that’s how I like it.

Got the pre-class handout today which included links for blog templates – looked though lots and was tempted but decided to stay with what I have now. I like that it is clean and simple and I hope I will learn how to do some tweaks.  Also had the graphic for the course whish is now on the left.

I don’t have a related photo but don’t like to see a post without photo so here is one I that I like that I took last week on my morning beach walk in Ohope, NZ.

Sketch at Ella

Ella had a competition to make a page based on a basic sketch.  I love to use sketches as the starting point for my pages so as soon as I saw the sketch I was excited with ideas to give it my twist.  I reduced the sketch so that I could give it a border all round - something that is on the CZ stuff a lot. I'm please with the result - 9 photos but it still looked balanced and not crowded.

Which colours to use?

I love colour. I use purple, green and brown pens for everything except very formal things. I dress in colour (mostly brown, purple, red range) and I like to have colour around me.

So when I was setting up this blog I of course needed to decide on colours to use. My default is purple and maroon but I decided to go for something different – I wanted some energy and contrast so that links stand out.

I used a fantastic free feature on kuler which extracts a palette from a photo. You need to register to be able to save palettes and you also need flash player for it to work (free and easy to install).

I browsed my recent photos for some with the bright and energized feel that I wanted and then tried them out. I chose the deep option because I thought those would be easier to read than the bright. You can also customize by moving one of the dots to a different part of the photo.

The palette I’ve used is based on the vegetable photo. You can see the palette I saved from it here. If you want to use the palette precisely then the website gives you the colour formula in various formats eg for paint and for printing.

I could play on this site for hours and a visit always gives me a lift if I’m feeling too greytone.

What inspired me today?

In this wee notebook every evening I record one think that gave me a creative buzz and one happy moment. Each evening’s note takes no more than two lines.

I am not imposing any rules on myself about what I can write or what kind of creativity I mean. So far creative buzzes have referred to projects I am working on and those I’m planning; food combinations; quotes and ideas I’ve read and heard.

There are 31 doublespreads so one for each day of the month and I stenciled the date in the corner for each. Once I’ve done a month of entries I will get the added boost each evening of being reminded of what inspired me and made me happy the month before. I think there is space for eight months.


Inspiration
My sister told me that one of the successful approaches to being positive about life was an on-going daily note of one thing that made you happy that day. The idea is to use the same notebook for several years so that you read earlier entries from that day as an added boost. I was too impatient to wait a year for the boost so decided to try a monthly notebook. I added the creative inspiration because creativity is such an important part of what makes me happy.

Supplies
· The notebook was a birthday gift from my folks this year – waiting in my ‘small books box’ for a good use.
· I love this stencil sheet for providing a consistent look. I thought about using stickers but it would use too many ‘1s’ and ‘2s’.
· The pen is STAEDLER triples fineliner. I use them a lot because they come in lots of great colours and the fine tip doesn’t splurge with use.