Things I’ve learned about my crafting so far

Looking through my craft photo archive, I realized that even though I have a lot of different sentiment stamps now, I really like the happy birthday stamp. I’ve used it in SO many pieces!

Other things I’m learning as I’m gradually acquiring the experiences and craft toolkit that are quickly moving me out of the nube category:

• Yellow, turquoise, and brownish greys pop up in almost every single of my cards – even the project life ones!
• There are many things I won’t do because I’m lazy and don’t like to clean up mess but that doesn’t seem to extend to creating my own background patterns – even if it’s for a little strip of background paper for a sentiment!
• I tend to pair muted subtle colors with only one pop of color.
• I gravitate toward images and patterns that imply movement.

Learning this is really focusing my craft purchases. Now I know that background stamps and distress inks will never go to waste because I love water color techniques and embossing . On the other hand, I am learning about the supplies I’m likely to use only once or twice. For example, I have over 20 mists — when Heidi Swapp’s line came out at Michael’s, I bought six of them in two weeks — and I almost never use them. I also love buying line image stamps in specialty scrapbooking stores but rarely use them. Recently, I bought the Paper Smooches Chubby Chum Pals set. That night, I made one card using the crab. Since then, I haven’t even thought about the set until I started writing this post.

It’s going to be hard because these sets are so cute but in the future, I’m going to try to stick with purchasing the digital version of individual line stamps — as I need them — rather than buying a set of images. I think this will work better for me because I really don’t like fussy cutting images. I know other crafters use dies but I’m not a big fan of those either. With the digital version, I can use the Print-and-Cut feature on Silhouette Cameo to get a perfect image outline and border. Then all I have to do is color in using my Copics!