How do you Craft?

I mean how do you choose what to do?

I really struggle for ideas. I've just sorted a massive pile of 8x8 and 6x6 papers and re-accquainted myself with some gorgeous papers. Only thing is I forget about them cos when I want to do a card I end up with the same stuff. Or I look elsewhere.

Do you choose your embellie/stamp etc first then choose paper, or do you think about the paper first and what you might have that will match it.

I really need to use up some of the stickers/toppers etc. I have, esp the childrens type ones as I struggle for kids cards yet I have a mountain of stuff.

Varies really but I would mostly say I choose the stamp or main focal first for a card.

Have found it better since starting scrapbooking and atcs, started to get a bit bored with doing just cards.

Strangely enough, Karin, it's when I sort stuff out and "re-acquaint" myself - as you so succinctly put it! - that I get ideas. Or, more likely, I think "ooh - I remember a card I saw in one of my mags/books that this paper would look wonderful on!" only to thumb through all the mags/books and not find it.

Story of my life.

Lynda

mine varies too , sometimes i just pick up a piece of paper ,am inspired by it ,then go and use it and am really pleased with what i do.
Other times i pick up a stamp , and use it and suddenly I have a card completed and I dont know how it happens .
Most of the time though i just sit down and get on with things and
i dont have any plans or no piece of kit that has inspired me and i just get going ,playing around until i get some decent stuff . at times when im uninspired i look through my books and mags or other peoples blogs etc and find something that i like and draw from it , just copy a certain little piece of it and go from there .
As for trying to remember where i saw things , well just like lynda i had trouble , until i started tearing things out of mags and putting them striaght into a hard back book with blank pages in ,i just paste them into it and use it for times when my brain is still in bed

At the moment I'm picking out an image to stamp, colouring it then finding papers to match.

Really wanna get some scrapbooking done but can't seem to find the... inspiration/energy/enthusiam to do it.

ooh i could not do it your way kate , well actually i have done before and then i cant find papers that match the coloured image and that really pees me off ...gggrrr!! so i dont do that now .

I think when I used embellishments I sort of went through my papers and matched up embellishments and ribbons, used to have about three or four sets ready to make cards with, now of course I am using the die-cut decoupage and the Christmas card pack I got last year and just making cards one by one so much easier for me as I have little imagination to make cards from scratch.

Thats it you see, I have on occasion stamped and coloured an image and then not known what to do with it. I think I am going to have to maybe work in colours for a while. Although I've done a few in the oranges and greens I keep forgetting about the blues and browns. I need to have a go at doing stuff out of my comfort zone. Men and children the usual problem, though at the moment I'm not too bad with the kids ones.

I just do 'what comes' normally.

Sometimes I set out to to a LO and end up making a card and vice versa, but either way, I usually start with my papers, then my photo or image and then find embellies to suit.

Yesterday though, I stamped, painted and cut out an image and she's still sitting on the table waiting for me to find stuff to go with her, so back to front on that one. lol.

I am a bit impulsive, and for example, the 'faces' atc swap, I decided i was using a huge collage stamp which has some tiny images of 'faces'...brilliant, or so i thought.....having stamped them in stazon and got rubbish images, i realised that the pad was to dry...I have restamped and cut out......brilliant??? nope, now what do I do???? I do have a title...

I think the title came first, the stamp idea next...now I'm stuck...lol but......in my defence.....I did do a lot of shopping for bits i can use.

Actually there isn't much space for me to craft at mums..and after all, i am supposed to be on holiday.

I do what has to be done that day (or yesterday sometimes), usually a card , but sometimes an ATC or swap/cj etc.
I pick the subject, then image then papers etc more often than not. Sometimes I have a use up session where I use up what's on my desk, or use a stamp I've had for a while and not used.
I rarely use new stash straight away as I can't quite see it as mine until it's been 'bedded in'