To Do or not To Do...List that is!

...and, YES another resource. I tell you I'm full of them! Its one thing to go without any ideas and yet another to have an abundance....because there is no such thing as to many resources. 

Now I know I'm dating myself when I say this but back in the late 80's when I was in college I was a list composer. Yes, I made list's upon list's. List's to get things done in my day. List of books I wanted to read. List of media I wanted to learn to use. I listed anything and everything, any topic even anything I thought about. I was also a brain dumper...but my brain dumps looked more like outlines or....like lists. A list with a purpose. 

I was told by a counselor during that period in my life, that I needed to stop making lists. That lists were a set up to negative self talk when you did't get things on the list done and that there was more to life than crossing things of my to do list. At the time I though "She's the professional what do I know anyway"? Well that counselor had no idea what she was talking about. 

1.) I didn't just list what I needed to get done. 
2.) I listed for the sake of seeing things more completely. For the complete satisfaction I felt when I looked at the list(s) afterwards.
3.) For a compartmentalized individual a list is total nirvana....and I don't mean the Buddist version of nirvana. I mean it is a perfect state of happiness.

Well I had completely given up on lists except maybe a grocery list (not very satisfying I might add) Then last year I discovered The Reset Girl, Cori Spieker. I read her About Me page and was pulled in by the those things I felt I had in common with her. The biggest thing about Cori that caught my attention was her Listers Gotta List or LGL. She puts out a list of prompts, one for each day of the month to get you reflecting on your life. Its not about being perfect and making sure you get them each done all though the month. Its about self discover and it is completely what this repressed lister needed.  I was in nirvana because here was an opportunity to take my list making smash it into my artistic-ness coupled with my need to tell my story for my kids and make scrapertunities. It was the "real deal" and of course another resource providing lots of scrapertunities to reflect on when needed was yet another opportunity to share with you all. Actually the LGL is nearly a scrapbook in itself depending on how you construct yours.

Some people use those refrigerator grocery list pads to compile their LGL each month, some use planners and yet others might paint theirs in watercolor or hand letter them. I use my Travelers Notebook for my LGL. 

Left to Right: Pocket Sized I use for my journaling and Bible studies. Center is a Personal Sized I use for my listing. I do a Journaling prompt insert and my LGL in it. Finally this is my Christmas TN, it is a Cashier Size and I use it to plan and track all things Christmas. *Not shown here is my Mixed Media Journal which is also a Cashier Size.

Here is a sample of Cori's LGL Prompt Download Sheet for November 2016. She creates these and posts them monthly as a FREE download.

I simply cut out the Prompt List and adhere it into my TN Insert (TN=Travelers Notebook) as shown below.

This is the Front cover of my October LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Oct LGL TN Insert

As you can see in this close up I like to layer my Prompt number and have printed out the Prompts on clear labels so they all look relatively the same. Generally I do mine two up on a page so I have room and those I know I have lots to write about or a photo I want to include I save the whole page.

Cori, The Reset Girl also sells LGL Kits. She offers an Essentials Kit as well as a Deluxe Kit. I purchased the Essentials kit for November in the Grateful Heart. 

Here are some of my pages using this kit. I also pre-ordered the December Essentials kit in A Very Classy Christmas. 

This is the cover page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

These list generate a lot of ideas that can be turned into Scrapertunities. For example the #2 prompt for November was "Words to describe this season of my life". I can see a few ways to turn this into a scrapbook page using both photo's of myself in the roles I listed above or using textural words (via embellishments etc.) running through the page. What a way to leave a legacy for your family about how you see yourself at this stage in life. It might be nice to add the date and age to the journaling block as well. (food for thought)

Another thing Cori has recently started is her Self Care Photo Challenges. She started this for October with the following prompt list.

So all during the month of October I posted a photo to my Instagram account based on the appropriate prompt. It was very much a challenge and I was not completely successful at it but it was super fun. Guess what else it did? ....... it created a Scrapertunity! 😲 Go Figure! So Here is an example of one of my posts.

and here are the final scrapbook pages I did of this process. They are 10, 9" x 9" pages and were super simple in the layout. I even just followed the same color scheme that Cori used in her Challenge image. I did them in the 9" x 9" because my Book of Me I've been working on for my kids is already in that size. I barely used any journaling because in my Instagram posts I had already done "mostly" a journaling block already. 

The Resource Theory and the Card Sketch Layout

I've always been a believer in you can do anything. Even those things you don't know how to do or have no skills at...as long as you have the resources to get the job done. I call this my Resource Theory. I believe in this so much I decided to have children after years of saying I wouldn't because 1.) I was fertility challenged and 2.) I come from a family who was Mother challenged and although my Dad had parenting skills I didn't think I could be an adequate Mother. After years of being around other girls/young adults and adults and their Mothers I learned one thing. I can do as I saw them doing. This is where my whole premise of the resource theory came from. Ask my children today what are two pieces of advice your Mother always gave you and they will say 1.) "You can do anything with the right resources" and 2.) "Make good decisions today"... or they might say 3.) "You come from a family of dorks so celebrate it...don't fight a good thing"...but you get the drift. 

So I was perusing Instagram the other night and came upon a blog, Something About Marie.  She talked about not being inspired by the sketch for a layout and focused on her card as the frame for her layout. This got me thinking or should I say stressing. What resources were out there that I wasn't tapping into, or worse yet what resources wasn't I using fully or correctly. 

Much to my husbands disdain, I have lots of resources in my life that I use for my art.  One that you may already know about is the Journaling Prompt and how I record those for use. Another if you follow along on the Facebook page, is the Mojo Card Sketches. They come out every Monday and I share the post on the Nina's Art Spot FB page. I do this because of my belief in the resource theory. These card sketches I use as a resource for when I'm stuck for an idea for a card layout. Sometimes they are merely stepping stones to a bigger idea for a card...but what if...what if I used them beyond what they were originally created for. What if they became a completely advanced Resource all together? So, I stewed on this idea. I pulled out my Mojo book of sketches and perused though it and ideas immediately started brewing. Thus was born a completely new resource right out of one that I was already using. The Mojo card sketch layout option.

Let me show you first how I have correlated my collection of Mojo sketches over the years. 

I took my old Z3208 Everyday Life 3 ring binder and used some PML cards and the My Crush Everyday Life Pages Z3210 from Close to my Heart and created the tabbed inserts.

The older sketches are laid out 4 up on a page.

Where as the 2015 and 2016 sketches I printed individually at 4" x 6" and inserted into Z3192 4" x 6" Memory protectors. 

So this is my Monday Mojo Card Sketch resource binder!

So the next step was to test this alternative resource within a resource. I perused through all the Mojo sketches and selected a couple to try. I then created them into single panels (no card flap). Here are the Mojo Sketches I choose and the single panels I then created.

Mojo #432 from 2016

Mojo #432 Photo Panel

Mojo Monday #432 Scrapbook Layout

  ~What you can't see is that I popped the panel up with 3D Foam tape so it appears to be hovering over the 12" x 12" page. However the angle of this photo didn't do it justice.

I have to admit there was something completely rewarding about doing this. I simply choose a Mojo Sketch that would fit the photo I had. I then picked out the papers for the panel. Like following any recipe that panel was pretty straight forward...but then the fun began. I laid the panel on top of the base page and looked at all the elements and paper I had left to my disposal and well I winged it. I just built upon the panel. It was very freeing and fun.

Here is the second page of the layout.

Mojo #121 from 2010

Mojo #121 Photo Panel

 ~Again...what you can't see is that I popped the panel up with 3D Foam tape.

With the second layout I pulled the basics from the first. Again this was completely satisfying and remarkably easy and fun. It did help that I was looking for something to do with an even I only had two photo's of. What is even nicer is that my daughters Senior Choir Banquet came right after her Senior Prom. I saved the Brushed Workshop on the Go to scrapbook the photo's from Prom so when placed in chronological order in her Senior Scrapbook it will all go together. Nothing more beautiful than when a non-plan comes together to look like it was planned. 

This opens up or nearly doubles my layout references. What a wonderfully awesome alternative. I hope you test these waters with whatever card layout reference you use. Comment back here and let me know what your take on this exercise is and if you found it helpful.

Here is a supply list of the items I used to create these two pages.

Supply List

• Close to my Heart's X7190B Brushed Paper Pack (retired) available HERE on my etsy store
• Close to my Heart's Z3013 Brushed Assortment (retired)
• Close to my Heart's X7190C Brushed Complements (retired)
• Close to my Heart's Z2002 Topiary Washi Tape (retired) available HERE on my etsy store

Happy creating.

The Journaling Prompt and your Scrapertunities!

Those of you who have been following Nina's Art Spot on the Facebook page know all about the Journaling Prompts that I post every Tuesday. I have gotten a lot of PM's (private messages) asking many questions about them and how they pertain to scrapbooking. In our last Journaling 101 ~ Stuck for Content? post I explained all about the journaling prompt and how it can be utilized to generate ideas, in site into yourself and your environment. However, I think many still aren't seeing how this can be utilized as mini Scrapertunities. So I'm going to show you. 

Whats In My Purse page from my book all about me

Many years ago I was asked at a party as part of a game what items were in my purse.  It dawned on me while playing that game I'd have loved to know what my Mom carried with her in her purse. Since I had my daughters mini digital camera in my purse I decided to take a picture of all the items dumped onto the floor. It was that moment all those years ago (actual date unknown because I never dated it) that I started my Scrapbook. You see each of my kids have their own baby album that I've scrapbooked. I had tons of events scrapbooked about our lives. However, I failed to scrapbook anything about who I was/am for my children/family to ever know the inner workings of me! Goodness knows most of those photos either don't have me in them or they are really bad pictures of me. Hence the book all about me was started. Now I can't say I didn't have some help along the way. I don't remember if I bought the book or if it was given to me by one of my scrapbooking friends, but its a gem. 

The Book of Me by Angie Pedersen

Things I have learned along the way are simple. You MUST date each time you write in your Journaling Prompt planner and each time you turn your Journaling Prompt into a Scrapertunity. Some of the best Journaling Prompts happen kind of spontaneously, just like that day when I dumped my purse out on the floor. Take some pictures of yourself...yes a selfie if you will. This gives you the opportunity to oversee the quality of the YOU IMAGE and your children/family members will eventually get to see a side of you they haven't, the YOU side.

Tip: Use SnapChat face morph as a method to take fun pictures of YOU. Also SnapChat face morph seems to make me look less droopy and "old". Its great! Take the SnapChat pic then screen shoot it and delete the image before posting. It never goes viral and you get the picture! 

Ok so lets take an actual prompt from the Facebook Page and put it into action. June 12, 2016 the Journaling Prompt was...

My Original Journaling: "The best advice I got was from my Dad. He told me that if I wanted to be a good cook the most important ingredient I needed to remember to include was my love. This taught me the importance of loving what you do. My Dad was a wonderful artist. He made incredible pieces of woodwork. Wood was his medium. His second medium was food. He was a wonderful teacher and a wonderful Dad."

"Birdy" my Journaling Prompt Journal

Now thinking about my Dad makes me sad because he has passed and I miss him so very much. When I wrote this it was because I have a  kids cookbook he gave me when I was about 6 or 7 years old. He inscribed the cookbook for me and I still have that cookbook. The cover has long ripped off but I've saved it. I think its time to turn this Journaling Prompt into a Scrapertunity and preserve a wonderful gift, an incredible sentiment and a lasting lesson. This is creating a lasting legacy at its finest!

Tip: Go small if big is overwhelming. Most of my family scrapbooks are done at the standard 12" x 12" size and at least 2 page spreads. My books all about me are 9" x 9" in size and usually only 1 page.

So I will now create a 9" x 9" Single page scrapbook page for my book all about me. I will use a copy of the inscription to replace an actual photo. I could possibly also add a photo of my Dad in the page. I will also include the journaling from my Journaling Prompt Journal along with the date I wrote the original journaling. 

If you are interested in the Journaling 101 in video format please keep an eye out for the Journaling 101 YouTube video that will be posted in the coming weeks.