Sweet Shoppe Designs – The Sweetest Digital Scrapbooking Site on the Web

Happy September everyone. I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve been on the blog. As summer winds down I hope that you all enjoyed the moments and made lots of memories. I’m here with a few tips for speeding up your scrapping routine.

“Hold the vision. Trust the process.” – Unknown

I was once dubbed the “Speedy Gonzalez” of scrapping. I don’t think I’m an unusually fast scrapper rather more efficient and able to make quick decisions. It’s not always about speed, I enjoy a good scrap therapy session too and can mull over a page I’m working on for a few hours. Typically though, my pages take no more than 1 hour and if I’m trying to fit in lots of creative team pages in a day, especially during those big sale events, I can whittle that time down to less than 30 minutes.

So here are few of my most tried and true tips that allow me to save time.

• Work from one kit/collection: I can’t express it enough, the designers here are amazing!! The collections & kits are full of so much goodness that I hardly ever have to go stash diving. If you can work a page from one kit/collection then you save time searching for things.
• Don’t second guess: I’m a “grab and go” type when it comes to clustering & page building. If there’s a flower I want to use I’m going to fit it in somewhere and don’t worry about if it’s “right” for my page. Or if I choose an element/paper that doesn’t look right immediately then I scrap it and move on quickly. I don’t go back and change things over and over. I trust my eye and my process.
• Know your tools: I’ll preach this one to the choir. You have to know your tools if you want to be efficient and fast. I’m a big fan of hotkeys and shortcuts. They really can speed up your process if you know and use them all the time.
• Don’t compare: This one is simple. Your pages are yours and that should show. It’s fun to see all the different styles in the gallery. If you know your style stick to it and that in and of itself is a time saver because you won’t have to go back and redo those pages later.
• Have a plan & stick to it: If your plan is to scrap about a certain event or moment, choose your photos early. Or work from a simple sketch and try not to deviate much. Hold the vision you have for the page. When we decide things last minute or on the fly we tend to take longer completing things.
• Keep it simple:  Simple pages you create everyday are going to be quicker to create. Don’t try out the most intricate or challenging effects or styles if you’re on a time crunch. Save the learning for when you have the time to sit and work on that extraction, blending or new technique.

And those are a few of my tips to save me time when I’m looking to speed up my scrapping routine. I hope they can help you. Let me know in the comments if you used these, or if you have your own time savers. We’d love to hear about them. See ya next time.