Get a Ton Done - Part 4 - Secret Weapon

First - before I bore you with more scrapbook talk, I want to share a punch project that was emailed to me Monday.  Valarie Williams in Kansas said I had inspired her to play with her punches - well, I'm really proud of that because look what she did!  She came up with this darling sock monkey...

Isn't he fabulous?  Great job Valarie and I really appreciate you sharing this.  Ladies, you can use him on a scrapbook page now that Santa time is over or just remove his hat and use him for anything you like.  Punches!  Gotta love them!!!!


Now back to the final installment of Get a Ton Done...
Today I reveal my 'secret weapon' for productive organized scrapping- it won't be a surprise (or a secret) to many of you card makers, but I found that many scrappers don't use it.  The secret weapon is SKETCHES.  That's right, they aren't just for card making!

I take several books/folders of sketchers and layout ideas with me.  They are great inspiration when my pages seem to all look the same or I need a starting point.  And BOY! do my sketch books get borrowed at crops!   I always meet someone at a crop who has never used sketches.

I tear sketches and photos of layouts I like from my scrapbook magazines and glue/tape them in a spiral notebook before I pass on/recycle the magazine.  I also regularly print sketch ideas from various web sites.

Of course you know me - I don't like to use things "as is" so I am apt to alter the sketch - flip it, add to it, change it, etc. but sketches give me a place to start - they narrow my choices and that frees me to get started and not have to try every possibility before I adhere my elements to my page. 

And yes, it is OK to tear up your scrapbook magazines.  It is just paper.  Why keep all those ads for products the stores don't even carry anymore? 

I had SHELVES of magazines and whittled them down to one huge file folder and I'm working on getting that down to a couple of spiral notebooks - just keeping the stuff that really appeals to me. 

I accomplished this by taking a stack and giving myself a deadline.  I had until X day to weed through the magazines and then I had to recycle them.  Then I'd do another stack with another deadline. 

I confess I kept a few magazines intact as a record of the early scrapping styles and a couple of my favorites but the rest are gone and HONEST, I don't miss them at all!  I can get plenty of ideas from current magazines and blogs - I don't need to dig through magazines from 6 (or ten) years ago.

If you really get into pre-planning your scrapping, you can select your sketches ahead of time too.  (Not just take the sketch idea books with you.) This would really make the most of your cropping time.  As you are reviewing your photos and picking your paper and embellishments, you could also be choosing a potential sketch for your layout.

I know after reading this mess for the last few days, it sounds like a lot of work but by planning in little bits of time it will add up to GETTING a TON DONE when you actually sit down to scrap!

Here are some sketch links:

http://pagemaps.com/
http://sketchesbytamara.blogspot.com/
http://www.scrapsuzy.typepad.com/sketches/
http://www.scrap-maps.com/
http://sosketchy.blogspot.com/

There are MANY more available, but SU says it is naughty for me to link you to any site that sells something other that SU, so look around and see what you can find to get you going on your 2010 scrapping!

Have fun!!