Curse of Creativity & Scrapbooking

About 10 years ago my craft revolved around embroidery and decoupage. R then introduced me to card making with punches and glitter. I found this to be a lot of fun. For a couple of years I refused to get into scrap booking. Being a photographer (amateur of course) I feel that the photograph is the focal point and not the decoration. Many of the scrapbook pages I had seen were over the top and did nothing but hide the photo rather than help it to stand out.

I don't know what finally made me start up. I think I just wanted to organise my photo's a bit better than they were. I was determined only to buy what I needed and not what I may need in future.

Yeah right!!! There is so much nice stuff out there.

Anyway we had an old table that I started to use as my craft table at the back of the lounge room. I managed to get some cheap plastic draws for papers and it snowballed from there. Eventually we decided to convert the shed into a studio. All my craft was to go into there (including sewing machines etc - they are yet to make it out there).

Now there are a couple things I am cursed with:

1. Being creative - yes this is a blessing and a curse because all you want to do is sit down and create something and look out anything that gets in your way! This would include tidying up.
2. Organising - I am the sort of anal person that has to have things organised into brands and then colours. Each colour then has to flow into the next as well i.e. yellow to orange to red and so on. I also like things to be within arms reach and categorised for easy locating.

THE CURSE:

Combine the two points above and you get chaos. When I start a project all I can think about is finishing it. This means everything required for the project gets pulled out and kept within arms reach. To begin with there is order and even as the untidiness grows I know where everything is. I get frustrated when the organised mess is no longer organised. By this stage it is a huge mess and I need to do a big tidy up. Unfortunately these tidy ups take longer than it did to make the mess in the first place because I have to reorganise the mess into little piles and then put it away. Now I am even talking about the size of the paper ... is it big enough to go back on the rack or should I put it in the scrap draw designated for that colour and forget that it is there.

Starting in November last year I created a special engagement album for my friend. I managed to tidy most of this up before I made the album for my father. As soon as the album was finished I started on the little story book album and have done a couple of monthly challenges as well.

Consequently time spent tidying has been minimal and as you can see by the photo's below it is very frustrating indeed.

My mother has also complained that I spend too much time in the studio and that she never sees me so I purchased a little table on which I could work in the lounge room to keep her company. Well now the lounge room has been once again taken over and mum is wishing she had never said anything now!! :)

Yes I sit in the corner there and work - not at the moment though.