Hey there. Erin here. Or rather, my lower half. That's what I got when I asked my husband to take a picture of me. The next shot was just my upper half. He then told me I could combine them for a complete picture. He's a funny one.
So it's Sunday night and I just finished watching the Lost finale. Did ya watch? I won't spoil it in case you haven't seen it yet, but wow. Just wow and oh my and I cried and I'm still confused. I loved it. But on to scrapbooking since I'm pretty sure you're here for that and not my Lost recap.
As my title suggests, okay, just tells you, this week will be pretty random. A different topic each day. When I couldn't come up with anything to blog about for an entire week, I decided to go with a bit of this and a bit of that. I'm going to blame my lack of preparation, and inability to focus, on being pregnant. Granted, at almost 22 weeks I'm feeling perfectly fine...but, uh, let's just go with it, shall we?
First up, inspiration. Where do you find it and what do you do with it?
I'm so not an out-of-the-box thinker. For me, scrapbooking inspiration comes from other scrapbooker's layouts. When I'm in a creative rut, I like to look at layouts that interest me, and from them I'll get either a design or topic idea. I don't keep ads, or color swatches, or the like. For the most part, I can't do much with them - I just don't think that way. But for what does work for me, I use a binder. I pull it out all the time when scrapping. It goes to crops with me. I love it.
Meet my binder. (Also, Hello Ali Edwards. I keep all my Studio A columns in the front, in case you were wondering. While I am a big Ali fan, I don't just keep a picture of her as inspiration. Also, Hello messy desk.)

In my binder, old-school magnetic photo pages. Hello old-school magnetic photo pages. While we shouldn't use you for actual photos, you're perfect for this, as well as my recipes.

I don't keep my scrapbook magazines. I'd like to say that when I get a new issue, I go through the previous one and cut out the layouts I like. But in reality, a few tend to pile up before I go through them. Once I do though, I go through my binder and pull out the layouts that no longer inspire me, and replace them with the new one. I actually have some in here that are 5 years old. I cut out layouts based on design, color, number of photos and placement, journaling, and topic.

I don't often to a complete scraplift of a page. Most often, I find one I like and use it as a starting point for my layout. Like this one I recently did.

The layout that caught by eye had a few strips of wide pleated ribbon, which for me became one strip of pleated patterned paper. This was the starting point for my page. Unfortunately, when I cut out the layouts, cut off the names. So I'd like to give this designer credit and share her page as well, but alas, I cannot.
Bulletin boards are great for collecting inspiring pieces - hang up some ads, pictures, layouts, swatches and you've got instant inspiration at your fingertips. I have one hanging above my workspace, it needs updating though. Sigh, It sort of seems to be the place where ideas go to die. Well, except for my mini-album to-do list, that I use. Otherwise I've got things up there I haven't done anything with in over a year.
I also hang my layouts on the wall above the computer using a nifty contraption from IKEA.(DEKA curtain wire ). I tend to look at these a lot when I'm trying to figure something out on a layout.I tend to go back to the same color scheme and design over and over. I find myself checking these layouts to make sure I'm not repeating myself too often. Note to self - change this out for some new pages. These are the layouts I made when I hosted the blog back in September. I'm seeing a theme here.

WCS has a Tumblr blog, (link is up top) as do team members Wendy, Elizabeth, Emily, and Jamie. They're a great way to capture images to later look back on, ya know, when you're needing inspiration. Anything you find online can be saved. It's fantastic. It's free, and no clutter. Hmm...so I'm totally thinking I need a Tumblr blog now.
It's 1 am, Lost on Jimmy Kimmel is over and with that, I'm heading to bed. I'd love to know what you use as inspiration and how you organize it. Keep a Tumblr blog? Leave a link, I'd love to check it out. I'll be back tomorrow with mini-albums. See? Random.