Welcome to another installment of Tips from Team Awesome where the lovely ladies of my Creative Team share their fave scrapbooking tips & tricks. Today Heather is sharing who she takes a layout from inspiration to reality. Take it away Heather!

While Lynnette is on vacation and enjoying her outdoors adventure, I (Heather K or interstitchal in the digi world) have a post today about one of the tactics I use to scrap even when inspiration is low.

This is a typical scenario for me: I have lots of ideas for layouts and layout designs that pop into my head at the most random times, often when I am unable to write them down. Then when I have some time to scrap, the blank Photoshop screen stares back at me. I’ve been working a lot recently in creating more inspiration folders for myself inspired by Stacy Julian’s Twelve and Pinterest. My Pinterest account is quite barren because I often look without repinning myself (I hope to get better with this- I’m planning on getting more involved with following and maybe more followers?? will help me), but Nettio has a most awesome pin board and is great to follow!

How do I create a layout when I just don’t  know what to do?  Where to start? Sometimes I start with a kit I want to scrap with. Sometimes I have a story or thought to build from. I rarely just start straight from photos. But what I find works well is along the lines of free association. Pick something I am dwelling on and then run with it.

Today, change has been on my mind. I am in the middle of a long move and I need a little inspiration and pick me up. I love reading and one of the themes that continues to run through my head is starting a new chapter in my life.

So I went to pinterest for inspiration and here’s what I found:

I’m really indecisive. So I use the pins to help guide my choices. What jumps out at my from these four images is the the freedom of Pin #1 (the open book on grass), the loose script of Pin #2 (grid pictures of cities with their names underneath), the colors of Pin #3 (the super cool art journal style painting), and the just get going quote of Pin #4 (ie stop agonizing and start scrapping).

Pin #1 made me think of the kit A Walk in the Park by Elise Hansen and Sugarplum Paperie

and Pin #3 made me think of Me Time: Chick Lit by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Jenn Barrette.

And when I don’t know where to start with page design, there little more satisfying than grabbing a Nettio Designs template. I picked the upper right template from Geometric Vol. 1  because I am planning on a photoless or max 1 photo layout.  And for some reason, I feel like chevron goes really well with books.

Then I open my kits, play, and plan my journaling. I was planning on making this a photoless layout until I realized that the picture from Pin#1 reminded me of a book photo I took in 2011.

I was going to pick just one kit to use for the layout since I tend to be a kit scrapper, but I found that the kit colors of both of the above kits worked really well together. The more the merrier! I used DJB Jennifer Script 1 as my loose script journaling font and DJB Tweenybopper for the Chapter title.

And my layout evolved into this:

Since I was using bits and pieces of different ideas, my layout came together smoothly and still feels like my own. And whenever I ran into a decision roadblock, I jumped back to my inspiration to help me decide.

Thanks for joining me (Heather K) today, I’d love to hear about your process for using inspiration in your layouts too!

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