My 2014 Crafty Plans

I thought a lot about what my scrapbooking/crafting focus should be in 2014.  I ended the year in a scrapbooking rut.  To be honest, I just was not enjoying the idea of scrapbooking for a couple of months at the end of the year.  2013 was a really full year scrapbooking-wise for me.  I was on the Evalicious design team.  Then I got on the Lily Bee design team.  Then I was back on The Digi Dares for a few months.  I was also on the Write.Click.Scrapbook. team and the One Little Bird team (still am).  All that just led to… a whole lot of busy work scrapbooking.  I was burned out.

This year, I chose to be on less teams so that I can live a more balanced life.  I want to fit lots of exercise and healthy eating in.  I want to read lots of books.  I want to watch movies and TV.  I want to hang out with friends and family.  And yes, I want to continue to scrapbook and craft!  All this and a full-time job!

So after a lot of thought, my scrapbook/craft plans for 2014:

• Create as I am inspired.  Less creative team deadlines means I’m more free to work on stuff for myself.
• Create regularly.  Creativity is a funny thing.  You need to practice it regularly for the ideas to really flow.  When I don’t create anything for a few weeks, I feel very rusty.  Not only that, but the desire to create lessens if I don’t do it very often.  That’s not what I want!  So I will schedule regular creative sessions for myself on my calendar.
• Continue to practice and experiment with modern calligraphy.  I love the calligraphy class I took, and I plan to keep going with it.
• Project Life – it will be my main scrapbooking focus.  But it will be more freeform and not too many rules.  I’m keeping with the 12x12 album, but will have different sized pages in there.  I plan to make pages regularly, but not exactly weekly.  And my album won’t have weekly spreads.
• Make at least one digital page per month.
• Make at least one 12x12 or 8.5x11 paper scrapbook page per month.
• Keep creating for Write.Click.Scrapbook. and One Little Bird.
• Use my stash.  I’ve got so much stuff!  It would make me feel really good to make a dent in my supplies instead of buying more.
• Keep craft room organized.  I don’t feel like scrapbooking or crafting when it’s a mess in there.
• In the same vein as using my stash and keeping my craft room organized, I would love to purge & organize both my digital and physical scrapbooking supplies.  Less is more if I love everything I have and can find my stuff!
• Make more cards.  One of my goals this year is to build more relationships, and giving handmade personalized cards seem like a good tool to accomplish that.
• More social crafting.  I would love to spend more time crafting with friends, whether at my house, at their house, or at a crop.
• Even better photo organization.  I want to utilize the metadata fields in Lightroom to caption my favorite photos.  I also want to be more consistent in photo-tagging.

The list seems long, but it’s not really, because quite a few of them are related.  I’m really exited that I have a focus and plan for my crafty endeavors for 2014.  :=)