Where Does It Come From?

Have you ever wondered just what it is that makes someone creative?? Why is it that some people can just sit and scrap with no planning or forethought and turn out fabulous pages time after time after time, while the rest of us mere mortals (which of course means me in particular) struggle greatly to get started.

I've been mulling over the June Scraps of Life Challenge for DSS for a few weeks. I know just exactly what direction I want to run with for this month's theme, but here we are now on 1st June and I haven't even started. In my defence, I needed to scan a specific photograph, and as I have no idea where my scanner even is, I needed to scan it at work. The problem there is that we had this witch of a medical student hogging the computer in the project room that the scanner is attached to all last week, and she wouldn't let me get on there for ten minutes to scan. Luckily we don't seem to have seen hide nor hair of her this week, so I managed to scan my pics on Tuesday. But then I've had no spark to enable me to be creative.

So what starts YOUR creativity flowing? Do you start a layout with a specific end result in mind, or are you like me and prefer to just throw stuff at the page in the hope that it will all come together just how you want? The thing is, in my mind's eye my yet-to-be-started layouts are these gorgeous confections of loveliness and style, but the reality is that they never ever turn out quite how I wanted. Is it annoying? Oh YES!

I still have no idea what to do with this layout for the Scraps of Life challenge. That's bad! I just don't have any ideas whatsoever, and usually in this situation I would spend several hours aimlessly trawling through my digi kits looking for the perfect background paper to start with. Then I'll no doubt spend more time trawling again and changing my mind on the background three or four times, before I actually get started. Then I'll get to the point where I absolutely hate what I've done, and this is the point where I usually give up and go to bed, before coming back at some point the next day and totally redoing the layout. The problem this time is that the photo I want to use is of someone special who I have never scrapped before. Because of how special this person is to me, I kinda feel that the layout has to do him justice, if you know what I mean. It has to be perfect. Every time I look at the layout in the future, I have to just feel that huge surge of love and affection that I feel every time I see his picture, and it has to NOT be diminished by my irritation that this or that wasn't right about the layout, or the thought that I could and should have done things differently. It's a hard life, this scrapping lark, innit!