Organizing our Creativity Stuff

This is one area I have found that people love to see when they come to my studio. They just go "ah, ha" when they see some of the ways that I keep my stamp sets organized. I have probably close to a hundred stamps sets at this point and it's almost impossible now to locate what you want or even remember what you have without some system. I initially started put my TAC stamps into CD cases and labeled them. I started marking the stamps sets that were discountinued with a yellow dot on the label so I knew they were no longer available to customers. I have let the large stamp sets that just can't fit into CD cases just sit in there original clam shells for way to long and finally got the notebook/page system that TAC sells to put them in but haven't had the time to do it. I am committing myself to the goal of cleaning up and finishing my organizing attempts by February 3rd. I figured if I can do a little bit everyday for a week I will be hopefully caught up on it. I also started a notebook that has all the stamp images I have on white cardstock and labeled with the stamp set name to make looking for what you want easy. Everyone loves this concept when they see it. Now, I just have to organize the stamps on my shelf into categories so you only have to look through one stack for the set you want rather then the whole entire collection. I will take some photos along the way on this journey and keep you posted on how things are coming together on my organization goal. It will really help to have it all organized so I can get back to creatiing without the "where is that stamp set?" problem.

Stretching the Creativity

I was looking through the photos of the note cards I made and thought I need to share about what happened as I contemplated making these cards. Well, the customer had 9 different themes for the cards like flowery, cooking, ducks, teddy bears. Okay, my stamp collection is fairly large but I just did not have all the stamps I needed to make these cards. I had absolutely no cooking stamps, my duck stamps were limited to one little rubber duck and only had 2 bear stamps. Now, I am not about to go out and buy more stamps and blow all my profit for making these cards so I stewed on it for a day or two and finally my brain said, "CLIPART!" So, I found some clipart that I could either color in with my markers, chalks, pencils, etc. or enhance with coloring, shading or adding some sparkle from the stardust pens. I managed to get out a whole lot more variety using clipart. Of course, I was limited to what I have but now I know there's more clipart available. It's just a great option if you want to make a card with a certain something and have time running against you. So, if you try this out, let me know how it comes out for you.

2010 goals

There are so many things that I want to improve upon in my life. To get some of these things actually happening, I created my own customized daily planner. I only made it for 3 months and will re-evaluate towards the end of that period to see what needs to be added or tweaked. So far, I have been taking my fiber and vitamins daily as I should. I have done bible study or bible reading everyday! I make the phone calls I need to make. Get my dinner planned before leaving the house for my day job and even have a bible memory verse and affirmation statement to keep my focus where it should be. My plan is to offer customized planners to my customers next year after this year of implementation and experimentation. I will have to invest in a really good binding machine. My Zutter works good for small projects but a planner just has too many pages. I still need to do a little design for my cover when I have some time. I had to finish a 100 card order, a school portraits scrapbook page order and my monthly scrapbooking clients pages and now have some baby shower invites to make up. I am wondering if I will ever have time to get my own scrapbooking done but I figure as my kids grow and move out eventually that my evenings and weekends will be open wide to do whatever I want but for now it's all about balance. I am gearing up for my first project playground on the 17th. I focused on birthday cards since I was designing 100 individual designs for one of my clients. I killed two birds with one stone. I will have to put a slide show together of all the cards I have made in the last half of 2009. I think even I will be surprised by the number but it's always fun to look at the designs and evaluate if I will ever do them again or not. I will be adding updating my blog, doing social media like Facebook and LinkedIn on a daily and/or weekly basis to my planner. I will have to write it in for now so that I can start getting into the habit. Many goals to accomplish this year but I know the Lord will help me. Happy new year to you all! Let me know what your goals are?