Did you know that by jumping on an idea, you feed your mind’s ability to generate even more ideas?

Progressively better ideas!

And if you continue to act immediately, your ideas will multiply to such a beautifully overwhelming amount, you’ll have a plethora of projects to choose from at any given time! More projects than you can complete (which is why I’ll have an article in November that shares how I deal with incomplete projects. Go ahead and free yourself!)

If you get an idea for digital scrapbooking but you’re missing the supplies, you can purchase them online and start right away! Not so if you’re missing essential supplies for paper scrapbooking. But don’t let that stop you! I start projects a lot before I have all of the essential parts.

You might remember this mini-book page from Paperclipping 150 – Task Batch Minibooking. You saw all of the pages of that mini. Did you ever notice that I never showed you the cover? That’s because I didn’t have a cover. I used the leftover pages of another mini-book, and I figured I would eventually be able to find some chipboard for the cover. At the very least, I could cut some chipboard down to the size I needed.

And that is exactly what I did. I found two large pieces of chipboard and I cut them to fit two different books (because I immediately started a second cover-less mini after I completed the pages you see here). Now I just need to find the o-wire in the size I need so I can bind it!

Problems From Lack of Planning

Of course, you sometimes run into problems when you don’t plan ahead of time. But then you exercise and increase your creativity even more by figuring out how to make your hodge-podge of pieces come together. For example, when I was making the pages of this mini-book, sans cover, it didn’t occur to me that the front side of the first page and the back side of the last page would be bare.

I had jumped on my idea and made four 2-page spreads with no thought for the morrow. And when the morrow came, I had to decide what to do with the first and last blank pages. I didn’t really feel like making an intro page. So this was my solution . . .

I stuck the left page onto the inside cover and added the pink patterned paper to the remaining length of bare chipboard, since the chipboard was so much longer than my pages. I did the same thing with the back.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Of course, this was a pretty simple problem, relatively speaking. It wasn’t as difficult to solve as my attempt to turn a Mexican punched tin mirror into a mini-book cover . . .

Making Room for Complicated Problem-Solving

I bought the mirror without any idea how I would actually pull it off. There were a few days when I almost hated that mirror. It was hard to figure out how to make it work! And it’s a little weird, maybe. But I did it! And I’m glad I did. I’m positive I’m more creative now than I was before I made that thing.

;)

Plus I love looking at the pages. Here are a few, but you can see them in my Mexican Minibook Flickr set.

So here’s where I encourage you to act on your ideas as soon as you can, even if you only have a few minutes or you don’t know how it will come together. Even if it means you’ll only assemble the part that is already in your head and you’ll leave the rest to figure out later.

I’ve actually been revamping my scrap room to better facilitate idea bursts and project-beginnings. I’ll share the results with you in November! Maybe you’ll have a pile of unfinished projects by then and will need the tips!

Weekly Roundup

• Paperclipping Video Tutorial – The Dominance Principle and Photo Groupings
• The Paperclipping Roundtable – Titles Don’t Have to Stop Traffic
• The Paperclipping Digi Show – The Digi Chick Talks Shop
• The Paperclipping September Challenge – Angie Ladeau!
• Paperclipping Live! – Normally I don’t post links to the recordings because we tailor this show for a live audience. But Izzy scrapbooking is just too good to miss.

Heads Up!

• Paperclipping Live! – This live scrapbooking show is every Tuesday at 6:30pm PST. Are you free?
• We’ll have another extra goodie for the Paperclipping Members next week as we continue to celebrate Paperclipping’s birthday! If you’d like to get your membership in time for it’s release, please visit the Membership Information Page. You’ll get immediate access to the archives of over 150 tutorials to hold you over while you wait!