Craft Friday: Scrapbook your ideas

Craft Friday is a 2012 recurring blog post

 where I present either a hobby jewelry technique

or project I'm currently working on.

Okay, scrapbook-techniques can be used to create jewelry, but this post is not exactly about that.

I'd just want to point out something.

Since every piece of jewelry usually starts to be designed inside the designer's head, I will be bold and propose that every design is 50-50.

50% of the design is based on your inspiration, and the other 50% is based on your own skill and materials. Without inspiration there can be no design, and even though design can come from the materials one has at hand, mostly it's more about the idea.

My ideas, they pop up all the time.

This is somewhat exhausting. No really, it is. If you're not really truly careful, you'll be in a constant state of "being inspired" and you'll have a 100+ projects that will forever be UFO's and have the attention span of an ant.

Thus, I pretty quickly started to learn the Art of Doodling. And the Art of Ignoring the Damn Voices of Inspiration in My Head. The latter one is the one I'm still struggling with...

Thus I present to you: the Scrapbook.

My Scrapbook.

It actually started out as a lab journal during my first lab courses, but then I realized it was too bulky to fit into my lab coat's pockets. So I exchanged it for a smaller one.

Lots of Post-it things here too....

Current things usually get their own Post-it marker, so I'll know where to find it, since the notebook is a real "jumper". The only 'logical' place in it for something is at the back, and that's where I keep the glued-in business cards.

The glued-in business cards.
In the back.

The rest is a real jumble of things, and a project must be HUGE (like a blanket or the like) to warrant a whole page of its own.

For example, the blanket Eorme got a page of its own.

The rest is a real jumble of things - ranging from techniques to try out, ideas for things to sew/crochet/bead to lists (oh yes, the ubiquitous "lists").

This right page was for the modeling jewelry course...

...and this one is for patchwork patterns.

So, good people, keep yourself sane while crafting.

Keep a Scrapbook, or the like. Like Pinterest, or taking photos with your mobile phone, or just doodling on paper. Anyway you do it is fine, but do remember to throw out or glue over the ideas that you later notice are awful.

Some things are so not worth saving, I tell you.