Pink Plungers OR How to Clear a Creativity Block...

You've worked hard all day. You've dealt with people, big and small, who have threatened to run your last viable nerve through a wood chipper and you managed to escape your peril unscathed. Through it all, the prospect of being able to sit down with your craft kept you going. It was the one thing that kept you going when your mind screamed for catatonia. It's the ray of hope when the idea of you-time seemed like a dismal punch drunk daydream. It's your lifeline to which you so desperately cling. It's your inner sanctum, buffeted by your creativity, protected by magic more powerful that the best Valium on the market and oblivious to all things barring fire.

You make your way to your sanctuary, be it a multi-function table (ahem...dining room), a corner of a quiet room, or a hidey-hole complete with door and functioning locks. You reverently inhale the aroma of the creative potential that emanates from your stash and sit down in preparation for a visit to Utopia. Calgon has nothing on Bazzill and you wait to be swept away on the creative current. And you wait. You shuffle through some pictures and tidy up a bit here and there. And wait a little more. You take a stroll through your patterned paper inventory in search of a sheet that jumps out at you. And you wait. You concede that the Creativity Train is obviously in need of a little jump start so you grab a magazine or idea book. And you wait.

And you keep waiting until that once small niggling fear grows to monstrous doubt. You can't find the story that you've been wanting to tell. You're stuck at the station waiting for a train that at that moment, you're certain will never arrive. It doesn't matter that you're screaming for the release. Your mojo has taken a holiday and oddly enough, you were the last to know.

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Scrapblock. The obstruction of a scrapbookers creative flow.

It's pretty darned common and it has lead a lot of people away from the scrapbooking hobby.
How it comes about is not really known, but there is enough speculation floating around to choke a fairly large horse. Some of the more common 'noted' causes of scrap blockage:

• Too much or too little scrapbooking
• Too many or too few supplies
• Intimidation (brought about by focusing too much on the work of others
• Boredom
• Style Evolution/Progression
• Fear (of acceptance or rejection)
• Loss of focus (as in, "why do I scrapbook?")
• Guilt. Life has managed to infiltrate your inner sanctum and therefore blocks creativity (i.e., you really should go finish folding the laundry)
• Disorganization/Clutter
• Too many creative outlets

I'm no expert. I can tell you with a degree of certainty that to have me as you psychiatrist would signify the first step on a very ill-begotten road. What I offer is my experience in dealing with some pretty monumental episodes of scrap blockage (I'm tempted to add "known to man" but I won't go there). At the risk of posting yet another novel, I will detail the above mentioned triggers.

Too much or too little scrapbooking:

Quite simply this is referred to a burnout or disassociation. If you take a break from scrapbooking, you may go through a period of reacquainting in which you have to simply get your groove back. I liken it to trying to strengthen muscles that have been allowed to atrophy; you simply have to work a bit harder to remind it of it's capacity. If you have entrenched yourself into scrapbooking by committing yourself to numerous design team requirements or contest prerequisites, your creativity, much like the over used muscle will first tremble, then falter, and ultimately fail.

Too many or too few supplies

With options comes choice. With choice comes indecision. With indecision comes doubt. With doubt comes fear. With fear comes stagnancy. I have found that it is really hard to get myself to say "this will do" when there are so many other things that might possibly "do" better. Yes, it's lovely to have all of the options available. I get giddy when I look at my 137 different colors of Bazzill cardstock, but then I get nervous about selecting the 'wrong' color for my layout and wind up putting it off until I am 100% certain. That's why I still have pictures of my now 3 year old that I took when she came home from the hospital. Having supplies are good, great even, but we must be aware of the fact that they can pose a threat to our creativity much the same as the industry's over saturation does.

Intimidation (brought about by focusing too much on the work of others

There is nothing quite like feeling that your work doesn't quite "cut it". You see a layout and you are immediately taken in by the way it was executed, the way it's creator melded colors, textures and embellishments perfectly. You want to take some of that and put it into your own work, but you can't grasp her creative process and every attempt to emulate her style results in something you see as contrived and fake.

Boredom

*yawn* It's the same old, same old with you. You pick your cardstock, slap some patterned paper on it, throw down some pictures, journaling and embellishments. No matter what you do, your layouts always strike you as somewhat cloneish. The very act of scrapbooking has lost it's emotional appeal and may possibly begin to feel like a job.

Style Evolution/Progression

After months of doing things one way, you start to feel the tickling dissatisfaction with your layouts. You want to just scrap the way you have been but every now and then you catch yourself doing something that isn't conventionally "you". Things that you said you would never waste your time doing are now piquing your interests and the need to go flying off on some creative tangent is scaring the scrap out of you...literally.

Fear (of acceptance or rejection)

You want that peer validation. Sometimes you think you NEED it. You've submitted your work for public viewing and have received little or no feedback of value to you. Perhaps there is a cliquish atmosphere on the site or at the LSS that you frequent and you feel the need to have your work "fit in"? Perhaps you don't want to be accepted into any body's fold and would rather keep it to yourself despite a part of you desiring to share your art with the world.

Loss of focus (as in, "why do I scrapbook?")

Scrapbooking has become a habit to you. If you are contracted to scrap for a store or a company, often the requirement to produce pages fails to make allowances for your personal tastes. There's nothing quite as show stopping as being asked to scrapbook with paper/supplies that make it hard to keep your lunch down. You've entered into a loveless relationship and that flies right in the face of a hobby that originated from the need to celebrate the things that we love. Again, it's become a job and for most of us, the word job and the word fun don't go hand in hand.

Guilt

Life has managed to infiltrate your inner sanctum and therefore blocks creativity (i.e., you really should go finish folding the laundry). For some of us, scrapbooking is a time that is spent away from those that we chose to share our existences with. The pursuit of me-time can be seen as selfish and *gasp* anti-maternal. The needs of others (i.e., our family, the world outside of our scraprooms) can often manifest itself when we least want it to. Yes, you should clean out that freezer, but is it more beneficial to scrapbook away some stress or to clean out a freezer while envisioning locking your husband in it? We are often trained to put others needs before out own and I'm frankly shocked that more women haven't run away from home.

Disorganization/Clutter

How can you possibly find your creativity when you can't even find your desk? I've always said that the first key to using your stash is to know your stash. The second key is to be able to find it. Clear your work top, clear your mind. Your creativity doesn't fancy wading through your clutter any more than you do.

Too many creative outlets

I am what you'd call a truly crafty person. And I'm a Gemini, which means I need constant change to stave off boredom. Honestly, I had no business getting into hands-on crafts. It has literally been a life sentence of indecision for me and if I'd known then what I know now, I would ran away from the prospect of crafting. I sew. I write. I paint. I scrapbook. I crochet. I draw. I make jewelry. How the heck can I pick just one? Like they say, jack of all trades; master of none. It is really a juggling act when you have so many active hobbies and often partaking of one involves feeling a desire to be more active in one of the others. The best of scales couldn't pull off that balancing act.

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Those are some of the more common triggers for the infamous scrap block. The act of breaking up a block involves trial and error more than anything else. Keep in mind that individual solutions offered are not often the end all be all cure for any one trigger (though sometimes we get lucky). Usually the cure to a blockage will require a broad spectrum solution made up of any number of these remedies. The key to figuring out how to break a blockage will always lie in determining what triggered it.

Remedies:

• Rediscover your space. Clean it, reorganize it, make it new. Who doesn't like new stuff? Sometimes the simple act of reinventing your workplace can trick your mojo out of hiding.
• Seek your inspiration elsewhere. If you often frequent an online gallery and feel that familiar self doubt when you see work that you really like, go someplace else. Try a magazine, an idea book, a local store.
• Learn a new technique/take a class. Focus your energy on perfecting a technique (another good use of those little scraps you've been accumulating). With mastery comes a renewed interest that could be applied to your layouts when the time is right. By taking the time to master it, you take a great deal of power from the fear of "messing up" your layouts and you give yourself time to envision ways that your new found technique can be used in a layout.
• Explore other paper crafting venues. Go grab your stack of scraps and start making cards. It could be something as simple as a making a stack of generic gift tags for future gift giving, or it could be making a stack of "Thinking of You" cards for people you haven't started thinking about yet. I used to make paper piecings just to see if I could do it. If you can step away from scrapbooking for a while but still keep your skills honed, you stand a good chance of shattered that block in no time.
• Explore other crafting venues. This is a tricky one because of the whole balancing act that you have to perform once you go back to scrapping (uh..if you go back to scrapping?). Sometimes all it takes is to delve into a different creative venue to get the juices flowing again. Good creative flow in one area can often be rerouted to other areas and successfully maneuvering another craft can be therapy for the spirit as all is no longer lost.
• Turn off the computer. You know what I mean. I used to do online crops and all of that, but I noticed that I rarely got a lot of scrapbooking done during my time spent online. It's hard to keep your flow going when someone is constantly IM-ing you or when you have to keep up with what's going on.
• Learn to value the opinions of those who have to love you. Okay, that sounded bad, but it's true. Once you give more credence to praise that comes from the people who love you, the praise that you may or may not get from the nameless, faceless masses will carry little weight.
• Volunteer to teach someone to scrap. Once when I was feeling blocked, I began to teach my son to scrapbook. Yes, he did ask to be taught, what kind of mother do you think I am? The very act of explaining how I selected papers and my designing techniques was enough to 'remind' myself.
• Step back from your obligations. There is nothing quite as liberating as scrapping for yourself. Use the papers that you want to use. Use the pictures that you want to. Keep something just for yourself; who says you have to share everything with the world? You could create a layout that you love and simply frame it as a little something for only you.
• Talk yourself through it. I have a little scrapbooking show that I sometimes host. There are only 3 people in the audience (Me, Myself and I), but it's fun to talk my way through a layout, contrived British accent and all. My husband thinks I'm insane and my son is quite certain of it, having taken lessons from my cooky behind, but if it helps I'll do it. In the future, I'd like to get a recording of an audience applause just to lend realism to the 'show'.
• Do some sketches. Either make your own, or pick some up off the .net. I always recommend pagemaps.com because they have an awesome selection of sketches that varies in style. I sometimes take a layout that I like and create a sketch from it, then scrap the sketch instead of the layout. This forces me to make the layout mine without allowing the other scrapper's design choices to weigh too heavily on my own. Sketch challenges are an awesome venue for chipping away at creative blocks.
• Scraplift something. Either lift it or case it. Which ever you feel most comfy doing. Please, do give credit where it is due though. I've never submitted any work that I've scraplifted, but that is a personal decision that you need to work out for yourself. I've found that scraplifting challenges are awesome for spurring creative flow because you have unmitigated permission to copy AND you have a time limit that kind of puts a kink in the old indecision wagon.
• Scrap with friends or alone. Depending on what you usually do, doing the opposite, might just be the B5 shot you're jonesing for. Sometimes the incessant hen chatter allows you to create without thinking about creating. At other times, having only the company of our thoughts allows us to hear the sometimes whisper quiet mutterings of our strangled mojo. The key is to mix it up and take yourself out of the box that you're currently stuck in.
• Force indecision into a supporting role. I've mentioned it before, but it bears mentioning twice. Indecision is the #1 killer of creative flow. You can force that hairy monster out of the spotlight by making your decisions ahead of time. Take a creativity deficient scrap session and turn it into planning session. Make up a bunch of little kits with your existing stash. Store them in 2 gallon baggies and go on to the next kit. The next time you have scrapping time, either grab a kit and scrap with it or make more kits. The most important thing to remember is to not allow yourself access to the rest of your stash until you've used what you've supplied in your kit. By doing this, you have forced your indecision monster into the background (at least for a little while) and you've allowed your sense of accomplishment to reign supreme. That alone is often enough to shrink your indecisiveness down to manageable size.
• Finish those incomplete projects. Got journaling to add to an otherwise completed layout? Do it. Need to finish binding a mini album? What are you waiting for? Have a tray that needs some modge podge? Grab your brush. There is much power to be found in the feeling of having accomplished something. If nothing else, you will have given yourself one less thing to think about while you're supposed to be scrapping.
• Allow yourself a night off from scrapping. Sometimes it's as simple as allowing yourself the option to not to scrapbook. Flip through a magazine, watch the boob tube. Do whatever you like and do it without an ulterior motive. Allowing yourself to not scrap when you don't want to is a great mental stress relief.
• Don't shop. The worst thing that I can do for a scrapblock is to shop. That might just be me, but I don't think that it is. If you have enough stuff in your stash to make your LSS owner jealous, going shopping for the perfect paper is nothing more than a band-aid...and a dirty one at that. Shopping has a tendency to lend power to the blockage in that it allows for more indecision and ultimately supply overload. I would avoid shopping...at all costs.
• Make a list and stick to it. One of my dearest friends makes up a daily to do list everyday. Her list is comprised of all of the things that she wants to get done around the house before she can start scrapping. When she has checked off everything on the list, she then allows herself to scrapbook without the nagging guilt. The key here is to make up lists of just enough tasks to allow you to not feel that you're neglecting your family, but still honor your need for you-time. A typical list might include: Finish & serve dinner, load/run dishwasher, wash/dry/put away a load of laundry, clean 2 bathrooms, administer baths & bedtime stories. Believe it or not, but with some practiced multi tasking, you can actually finish that list in 3-4 hours and be scrapping by 8 or 9pm if you get home at 5pm (I'm a night owl, so that is perfect for me). Don't believe me? Email me. I'll send you a detailed agenda of the way the evening unfolds.

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Creative blocks are normal. They don't have to be the monstrous burden that they are perceived to be. I view them as a means by which to warn me that I need to stop and reevaluate. Usually after I finish rethinking the way I do things, the block melts away until I lose sight again. Everybody goes through blocks. Everybody. It's just that some people know themselves so well that they are able to discern where it's coming from fairly quickly and are thus able to get their juices flowing before anyone notices . That takes practice and self awareness and perseverance. Something we are all capable of.

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TFR!