Challenging myself

Since Jaimee continued her guest designing stint at The (dash) Lilypad for another month, I decided to use it as opportunity to challenge myself. More accurately, I decided to see if I could, in fact, muster the courage to complete all seven of the challenges at The (dash) Lilypad. Turns out I did, could and would.

It also turns out that challenges are a great way to scrap your stash, old and new and use things you love along with things you normally pass over.

I started with the BYOC challenge. You had to use at least three separate BYOC kits, so it was fairly easy to do. I allowed myself the freedom to scrap photos that would generally never make it to the page otherwise, use some elements that were a bit outside of my comfort zone and to just have fun with it:

The second challenge I did was the One Word challenge. The word was 'fun' and for this one, I knew exactly what photo I wanted to use and what kit I wanted. I'm kinda in love with the kit currently-- Allison Pennington's I Am What I Am. The page came together quickly and rather effortlessly.

The third challenge was the Product Challenge and definitely outside my comfort zone. You had to take a template, change it up and create a page. I am not a template scrapper. They always make me feel constrained, so that I find it harder and slower to create with them. I did it anyway, not only using the template, but using the color purple, which for some reason I normally avoid. (Also, I made a typo, which I need to fix.)

***For those of you that are marveling at that cool stick pin piercing the paper so realistically, I can't take credit. The pin came like that in the kit. I did find a great tutorial for the technique HERE.***

Next was the Scrap Lift (all one word, idk?) challenge. The Polly in charge of the challenge gave us a particular gallery to lift from, so THIS is the page I lifted. I used a ton of old BYOC products and kits that have been collecting dust on my EXHD for year along with some new things-- anchor-- that I didn't think I'd ever know how to incorporate onto a page.

Still with me? Good. Now you may have a sense of how I felt after I made the page above: Is it over yet? No? Darn. I mean awesome-- more to scrap. Let's play a video game now. Like play all night because it's Friday. I need want to clean the kitchen now.  I needed a mini break to recharge. Yet, I knew that if I took too long a break, I'd never reach my goal. I told myself that I would finish the last challenges over the weekend or not at all. I know me.

What you aren't seeing are the pages I made for my CT duties. In just under a week, I ended up making about seven pages. Yes, my family is still alive, well fed and my house is still kinda clean-- the cat decided mommy didn't pay enough attention to him, so he shredded some boxes and papers.

Saturday morning I started on the Template Challenge (mini mini break), which was challenge number five. Again, templates are just not my thing. I work better with a blank canvas. Still, I wanted to get it out of the way. Thank goodness the template was rich with white space I didn't have to fill.

I decided to pair the Amy Martin page design with Micheline Martin's Esspresso Yourself. I've wanted to do a page about coffee love in general for awhile. Yet, I had to add a little of me to this template, so I used some paper to edge the bottom (so the design didn't slide off the page-- cause worry that my page parts may run away without some sort of edge).

Home stretch. The Journaling challenge. I decided to use an old photo of my Mor mor with my mom and an my aunt. It's one of the only photos I have of my Mor Mor. This page had me really in my comfort zone because it was story driven. Like any good story, there always seems to be a story about telling the story. This page is no different. I think my Mor Mor picked the journaling font because that's the only font I could get to show up no matter how hard I tried. And when the page got to this point, I couldn't do anything else. Seriously. I couldn't add any more elements or fuss with anything because the program would just stop working. Only this file had an issue, so I like to think I had some help with it (even if the file was buggy).

Now the finale! Yay! Almost done!! It was the Random Challenge for the win. You were given three wonderful pages to pull one thing that inspires you from each of the three pages then use that inspiration to create your own page. I decided to use the big photo from one page, stitching from the next, and finally the use of numbers from the third. This page is all about our beach tradition that is slowly dying out because my soon is growing up.

I did it. I reached my insane goal. I really like how the challenges pushed my limits and made me think about creating pages in a way I hadn't before. I don't do them too often, but I think they are a wonderful tool in the scrapping community, especially if you have no mojo or are afraid to try new things. I think I'll schedule in some regular challenges from now on to keep me feeling scrappy fresh!

To see the full supply list for these pages, visit my gallery HERE.