But I've got a problem and I'm hoping my scrappy friends can help.
I'm slowly getting back into scrapbooking and I'm changing the way I deal with most of my photos (more on that later). What I'm finding is that what should be a fast and easy way to scrap is being slowed down by supply overload. I can easily purge a bit of stuff but there's still a whole bunch that I have that I really want to use. But I can't keep going through my whole stash for each set of photos that I scrap because it's wasting my time!!
So my question is do you have any strategies for using up your stash easily?
In the past I have essentially kitted up a number of pages at once laying out the supplies I want to 'use up' and matching them to the best fit photos/LO's. But I don't think that will work for me now and I am reticent to 'kit-up' a bunch of pages as I am scrapping too slowly so I know that when I come to my kitted pages my motivation/ideas/mood will have changed and I won't necessarily want to follow the plan I had already started. I also want to avoid using stash just for the sake of using it- because I've found in the past it often doesn't make a page that I am 100% happy with... rather it makes a page that is the best of a bad situation. Or it makes a page that was supposed to use certain supplies but actually doesn't. :-)
Ideas please....
♥
2 comments:
My first piece of advice (and I speak from experience) is don't buy anything new. Being financially challenged (I'm still not working, so no disposable income whatsoever) is a huge incentive to shop your stash!!
My second piece of advice is think about how your stash is stored. I know space is an issue, (it is for most people), but try to think of your stash as your shopping facility/venue. Are like products stored together or do you have things set up by theme or colour for instance? Do you know where everything is, or are there some mystery piles still to be explored?
I know I am lucky to have a bit more space than the average scrapper, even though I still want more, but for me I use a combination of different methods of storing things. For instance all my ribbons are generally together in two bundles (the infamous pom poms still), yet other embellishments are stored by theme (i.e. feminine, masculine, events, season, babies, family, sports etc). I keep alphabets separate and in colour order.
Third piece of advice is once I have decided on the pictures I intend to scrap (and this is always my starting point), I then "shop" my cardstock and patterned paper, before moving on to embellishments. If I don't have exactly what I want in my stash, I find something that will fit or make do. Maybe I'm not happy with the patterned paper... so alter the colour with acrylic paint or distress ink. If I don't like the flowers, same thing. For me it is all about using what I have and making it work. Most of the time this forces me to be more creative and more experimental in the way I create. Use old tools in new ways. Use up your stash of paints and inks for big impact looks rather than small accent looks.
I hope all that rambling helps. I'll be interested to see how it all turns out and I'm really pleased to hear you are getting back into this creative aspect of your life.
Thank-you so much for taking the time to answer this one for me. I think we both organise in a similar way although I only have Baby, Christmas and Travel in themes and the rest is sorted by colour because that's how I scrap. I also have a stash of my latest purchases because that's generally what gets me the most excited- this may be part of the problem.
What the crux of my issues is though is that I'm spending too much time sifting through stuff to find something I want to use and I have some stuff that is years and years old and I still really like it but to be honest I'm sick of seeing it. I think maybe if it could go to another scrapper I might not mind passing it on.
In the last couple of days I have been working on an organise and de-stash - Will's class will be getting some cool treasures! And also applied a few strategies- I'll share as soon as I can.
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