Assignments and time

It's already time to get personal again.....

This time my topic is design team commitments.  In one if my last blog posts I wrote about how I now can't create without a purpose and that I need assignments to scrap, however it's not always easy keeping up with deadlines. I don't really like being late with my blog posts/projects but sometime there is just not much time and I don't know so many weeks in advance what to create and it also often take quite sometime for my kits/products to arrive.   So today I am starting this blog post at 7 am and I spent the whole night finishing up a project to be able to keep up with a deadline. I don't feel stressed really, but it took a lot of time to find out what to do and finish it.  We are going away this weekend (in 7 hours) and I also need to bake,pack and shop before we leave so no sleep until I get inthe car for the 4,5 hour drive to the cabin.....

So how did I pull it off at all ??

Well, I took a good look at the products, picked out a color scheme with only a few colors,( spent too much time hating my old Silhouette....) and then I started making a background. More than once before I have written that I very often make several backgrounds at the same time to have for future projects. It takes a while for mists, watercolors and paint to dry, even with a heater... I was also pressed for time so I smeared out black mist that had't dried.   Even without a heater it can take more than a day for some black mist to dry... And I don't always want to use a paper towel, then I might remove too much color.....  

Not only did the Silhouette cause problems, but tonight I couldn't seem to get the layers right. i think I rearranged them and cut pieces here and there at least 10 times.   Finally I was happy enough and stapled it all together. This I do so I can easily remove the staples if I change my mind again... 

Then I could just tape it to my background and start covering all my black smears with titles and stickers..... 

Am I happy with my layout???? It ended out a lot better than I feared in the beginning when I just wanted to give up....  Some of my best layouts have been created under a lot of pressure, but it's not always fun.  The worst part isn't always over either- There is something called a blog post and I have to figure out sonething clever to write, those "free" project blog posts are the worst, much harder to write.... I just want the layout to speak for itself..... 

I have seen a lot of scrappers cave under the pressure of assignments for various reasons, I gave up most of mine for a while 2 years ago, Then my mind was too busy with other stuff to focus on scrapbooking, but with everything resolved I got the design team itch again. I felt bad resigning, but then again it's not fair not giving my best either, there are always others knocking on the door. 

This year my issue is different, this time I have put the pressure on myself in a way. I want to evolve, find new inspiration and grow as a scrapbooker... I just haven't found a way yet. One reason Is that I feel like I am too much in between the traditional scrapper and the mix media scrappers.  Sometimes I say hurrah- I found my niche, but I also want to be more inspirational since all my layouts more or less are for assignments.   But being in between means much less inspiration to be found...  Since I don't look at myself as an artist, I can't draw or paint a single thing to resemble what I want it to be. I can't color either.....  I am just blank when it comes to art, I don't even enjoy watching it...  Going to an art museum is just pain.....  I would be more interested in the process behind and how they do it than the finished project.....  So in stead I just use my watercolors. I have lots of real paint too, but It gets so messy that I give up....  

I would have loved to be at a crop with team mates to see how they work, or other scrappers who look at scrapbooking in some of the same ways I do,  or at least work with color products......   

Back to being stuck with assignments.  Just making background is what helps the most snd I just don't get myself that I don't do it often enough. But here too I so want to try new things, but I also don't want to ruin my few watercolor papers......  You might see that I use a lot of the same colors on my backgrounds, mostly because my assignment papers are those colors, but also because in those color scheme I have enough to have lots of different shades of each color. I have for instance a hard tine making a red background, I haven't found the right paint/mist combo to be happy with the result..   I have lots of mists/ peerless paper, it's just never enough and I would like to try soo much more products too, I just can't get what I want here in Norway and shipping is soo expensive from US stores that have what I want.... 

I also like to work with sketches, I just don't like using any sketch I like from Pinterest for a project.  I used to participaye in lots of sketch challenges years ago, but all my favorites are gone. Since I don't like to fill a page, very linear sketch or lots of photos I have given up on this. 

Another idea to get going when you are stuck is scraplifting. I love thatkind of assignment, but dare not do it just to scrap.... I am too shy for that...... 

Other things I can't do just for myself is being inspired by Pinterest pics, but that I can do for assignments...

There are other reasons why I love assignments too. I get to play with fun products I rarely can buy here in Norway.. Getting new stuff every month is fun!
Then back to the other part of the title - TIME.... How to get time to scrap.  I have most of the time just scrapped in the evenings when I had nothing more than myself to think of. I don't scrap well with the kids around me and in the weekends I don't always feel like steeling time from the kids so that doesn't always get me much time and even less daytime as my scraproom is in the basement.  For me it also takes a while to "plan" what I want to create.  I really wish I had a scraproom close to the kitchen or living room, that way I could more easily steal time to scrap with the rest of the family around me...  I can't scrap in the living room - I  make too much of a mess for that. Last time I scrapped there I used the whole living room table - with room for 10 people.......    

The reason I have time in the evenings after the kids are asleep is that I don't watch TV.... I just don't have the patience for it... These last week however I have made an exception.... I love to watch handball - and now it's the European Championship (men).

So my questions if you want to answer:
What is your favorite type of assignment ?
Which team would you most like to be on ?
How much time do you scrap each week ?
Where is your scraproom ?