Reading now: The Organized and Inspired Scrapbooker

I have been wanting this book for quite a while now- as if it may be the answer to my productivity problems and my stash usage problems... I'm not sure it is but the jury is still out. Especially as I am not even finished the process (story of my life starting some sort of (self)-improvement and then not finishing!) But I digress.

The book which is now completely out of stock at it's publishers (the recently defunct Simple Scrapbooks owned by CK Media who are also on shaky shaky ground financially) apparently there have been copies sold on ebay for US$300 which just goes to prove that some scrapbookers have more money than sense! I got mine for a very tidy NZ$36 on Trade Me. You could get one on Amazon for as little as US$200 (Choke chortle acckkk!!!)

The book is written by Wendy Smedley (an ex-SS creative editor) and Aby Garvey (organising expert).

It has 16 chapters as well as sections for projects and resources and also comes with a workbook full of questionaires. It's not at all hard reading or questions but personally I found it quite underwhelming and a LOT generic. It won't help you if say you want to set up a scrap space in your dining room so you can get the baby into the spare room if you are a scrapbooker who needs things to be visible for you to take advantage of your supplies. But if you do have a reasonable sized space and are able to set things up in a manner that suits you it will help you to do that. And it will help you to purge some stuff if you are strong and just do it!!

It will also help you think about the way you look at your supplies and your processes when it comes to scrapbooking... and if you always do things in the same way then that's great and may in fact inspire more and better action from you, (if you don't it's not so great).

There are 5 chapters dedicated to showing off showcasing some (obviously well off) scrapbookers spaces from large to small.

The book is very pretty and has lots of pictures and even though any good organising guru will tell you organisation is not about storage you will find a heck of a LOT of pretty storage in this book and while they tell you you don't need to buy anything- unless you've been doing it right all along and don't need to change, or you have been hoarding storage then you will need some stuff for sure!

This all sounds pretty negative but as I said I haven't finished working my way through the book and rejigging my space (I need some pretty storage solutions) I will definitely report in when I am done. What I have learned is that I choose supplies based on colour and so I am reorganising my embellishments, papers, paints and most likely stickers and alphabets on this basis. I have also gathered all my journalling/word based supplies in one spot including stamps. I have also learned that I need to be able to see what I have in order to be able to use it so I have but my gear into (cheap) open containers and also changed my ribbon storage to meet these needs and have half a plan to get my under utilised tools set up and in view! All of this takes space though and using space ain't going to make a space for the baby to move into the spare room. I am seriously considering scaling back my paper scrapbooking to small hybrid projects and LOTS of digital stuff..... bet you never thought you'd hear me say that did you?

I should say I did actually do a little paper scrapbooking this past weekend (I'm working on a mini abum of my favourite photos from my garden) and I definitely used stuff that I haven't used at all before (stamps in particular) and I definitely found it harderto find my the patterned paper I wanted as I haven't sorted that yet. And easier to find suitable embellishments by just going and grabbing my 'purple' box to match the green of my paper and the purple in my photos. It's also shown me where I have holes in my stash yellow and blue (an excuse to buy???) and what to not buy- pink and purple!

More as I work through the process- including the before and after pictures!

♥