Welcome to the pre L.O.A.D blog hop. You should have come here from Dani's blog. If you stumbled upon the hop by accident, I hope you'll go back to the beginning and see what all the lovely ladies have to offer.
In case you don't know L.O.A.D. stands for LayOut A Day. It's the flagship class of Lain Ehmann--scrappy super hero extraordinaire. Three times a year, she challenges a group of scrappers to create a layout every day for a month. She picks a theme and sends out prompts related to that theme every day of the month with samples from her featured scrapbookers. In preparation for the next event in February, Lisa Hausmann has organized a group of veteran LOADsters give some advice to the newcomers to help them complete the month successfully.
This will be my second LOAD. My first was last May, and I completed 69 layouts during the month. It started me on a path of scrappy productivity that I haven't let up on since. There are a few things that I learned that make it MUCH easier to complete a mission like this.
- Limit your supplies. If you're like most scrappers I know, you have way more stuff than you will ever use. When you sit down to scrap, it's an overwhelming task just to choose what you're going to work with. You don't want to be frustrated everyday, so you should decide before the month starts what you are going to use. I love playing along with the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog to get inspiration for putting together kits to work from.
- Not every layout has to have pictures. When it comes to memory keeping, it all counts. Sometimes, the prompts will spark a story that you just need to get down and into your albums. On those days, just go with it. Let a large block of text take the place of a photo.
- Don't be a neat freak. Have a home base for your LOAD supplies, where you will be able to work on your layout every day and not have to worry about getting things out and putting them away. It's enough work just getting this done without the extra pressure of having to keep everything tidy too.
- Pull a few old pictures before the month starts that you've been meaning to scrap, but just haven't had the time. I have a shoe box of photos I took from my grandmother's house years ago with the intention of scanning them. Needless to say, that never happened, but with load coming up, I've flipped through that box and pulled a stack of photos that sparked something when I saw them.
- Do some digi. I know that not everyone loves digital scrapbooking, or has even tried it, but I do. What I love about digi is that it's so fast and doesn't require much physical energy. There are lots of sketches available to take some of the design pressure off paper scrappers, but digi takes it one step further with templates. Not only has the designer given you a general idea about how to put together the page, but they've also done all the cutting, layering, and sometimes even embellishing for you. You just have to clip your supplies to the layers (or substitute the layers with your supplies), put in your photos and journaling and you're done. I have a set of 52 digital templates that I gave away on my blog last year. You can go through the posts and download them for free, or if you want to save yourself some time, you can purchase the whole set using the button in the sidebar.
I hope you'll give LOAD a try. It's an excellent experience with a fantastic community of ladies. Leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by, but don't quit here, continue with the rest of the hop! The next blog in line is Karen at Photos Kept Alive. If you get lost along the way, here is the full Hop List.
Dani http://scrapperonthestreet.com
Valerie http://myrainbowcoalition.
Karen http://photoskeptalive.
Danielle http://ecoscrapbook.blogspot.
Connie http://clickychickcreates.com/
Sherrie http://littlebitofeverythingme
Cara www.vincens.typepad.com/
Heather http://noexcusescrapbooking.
Kim http://gma654.blogspot.com
Christy http://myscrapbookevolution.
Lisa E http://lisae-design.blogspot.
Lisa H http://lisahausmann.blogspot.
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