POLL: Favorite Kind of Challenge | pad patter 09.30.2020

I like most challenges, but you made us choose

 

First of all, I love all the challenges we have here. I have done all of them, all the monthly challenges, designer challenges, and the technique lessons and old Polly challenges. The only one I haven't done much is the BYOC, because I can't buy stuff very often. That's why I appreciate that we can achieve the top coupon for the monthly challenges with only 7 of the 8 challenge categories.

I chose Technical and Journaling as my favorites for the poll because those are the ones I'd miss the most. I find focusing on a single technique very inspiring. I've actually been doing fewer monthly challenges in the last year and finding inspiration in the Learning Pad instead. And I love creative journaling challenges simply because I love to journal. But I have enjoyed all the monthly challenges. Templates are great for when I want to quickly make a page. When I was getting over a scrapping hiatus, I often did the Template Challenge first to "warm up." Scraplifting is actually my least favorite. Not sure why. Maybe it feels kind of limiting? But occasionally I am inspired by someone else's layout, so I still think it's a great idea. Recipe challenges are often kind of boring. I like them as the warm up on Day 1 of MOC though! I love art journaling for the same reason I love journaling in general, I like expressing myself, but sometimes I'm stumped by the art part of it. I know, no rules; I have been doing more and more of it. The photography challenges aren't usually very challenging, but I studied photography deeply for several years, and this is for scrapping, so that's ok! The Inspiration challenges are sometimes awesome and sometimes fail to inspire me. No way to make that better; inspire is very subjective, right? Not sure what you mean by Titles/Words/No Photos. I do enjoy occasionally being given a quote for inspiration. I have been less reluctant in recent years to make photoless pages.

I think the monthly challenges have gotten less creative in the last couple years compared to when I became active here in 2016. The creativity then really impressed me. Of course, that was January 2016, and the MOC challenges have been awesomely creative every year! I'm sure it's not that the challenges have changed much; but I have. I had a scrapbook existential crisis at the end of 2018 and realized I don't want to be creating so many big heavy 12x12 albums as I had been. I haven't printed one since, as I'm trying to figure out a new way (and I got busy with a new job in 2019, etc.) So maybe the challenges didn't get less creative so much as I became less motivated to scrap.

But I figured out that I don't have to print every page and DO want to keep on scrapping at least a few pages every month. So I'm still eager for challenges and lately I've been enjoying technique challenges the most and intending to work my way through the Learning Pad.

Thanks to all the people who give so much to TLP and to all those who participate so we can have this awesome place!

Oh! You asked for ideas. Can we have more speed scraps?
A challenge I had fun with at another forum way back when I was new to digiscrapping, circa 2007-2010, was a crazy one. Called "Mess or Masterpiece," the host had us navigate in and out of our digiscrap files selecting things based on her directions, like "In the third folder, pick the seventh button," or "Pick the twentieth paper." I don't know if it would work as well with the way I organize simply by designer and kit now though; back then we (gasp) broke apart our kits and organized by category and color (papers, fasteners, word art, etc). I usually declared my page a masterpiece despite the randomness of it, and it was hilarious fun. Maybe it's why I'm not a kit scrapper today.
Sometimes during DSD and other events we have a slow scrap in the forum, with new directions posted every few hours or a couple per day. That's fun.
How about revive/review old technique lessons from the forum? We need repeated practice to master a skill.
Ask Cynthia how she comes up with her journaling challenges for MOC. I have absolutely loved how creative they are and those are some of my most favorite layouts I've ever made.
I'll try to think of more.

I hope this isn't too terribly long.

Happy DSD!

 

I chose Template and Journaling as my two favourites.

I especially love a Template challenge because: 1. it solves the problem of composition and design (which is often a stumbling block for me); 2. it solves the problem of which template to choose (I have so many great templates in my stash, and I often find it difficult to just pick one and commit to it already...maybe I should use this template? yeah, that would work...no wait, but what about this other template? or that one?...); and 3. I get a free template!

I never do Art Journaling challenges, I just wouldn't even know where to begin (I love seeing others' art journaling pages, though).

Of the challenges that I actually do, I think the Scraplift challenge is my least favourite; and like @michelepixels, I'm not quite sure why. I guess I find it too limiting, but also too intimidating (the page that I want to scraplift is so beautiful/creative/awesome, there's no way I can do it credit...).

 

I'm a simple girl. I chose Template and Recipe.

Template - I don't have to think when I use a template.
Scraplift - I don't think as hard. By this I mean that I'm limited in my choices what to add on the page, and I'm faster.

 

I never would have guessed that we have those things in common, Michelle!

I miss lyric or song challenges, Color challenges; challenges that are unique. One that I remember clearly was the one where you had to find images to represent a letter of the alphabet like these:
and use them for the title:

Following design trends helps with finding unique challenge ideas. Another one was using the Fibonacci Sequence - or the Golden Spiral
somewhere as inspiration in the design of the page. That was cool! I hope this is helpfu! The Lilypad is special- and we've made it this far through 2020- Thanks for all the effort put in here each month!

 

Template and recipe for me! My favorite thing about both of those is that I can make them work with any photos or themes I want to scrap. They give me direction and let me have the fun of a challenge without distracting me from whatever album I'm trying to make progress on. I have more than enough ideas about what to scrap, so I dislike challenges that ask me to scrap things I normally wouldn't, like my favorite movie or a winter photo when I'm working on a summer vacation album.

 

For me it is a recipe and technically, I like to get some specifications and use them to create my own, creative layout.
I also really like color presets
In general, I always find the variety in the challenges charming, so not always taking the same category every month, but rather different types of challenges each month

 

I voted for Template and Scraplift as my two favorites because they are often the two monthly challenges that I do first. I find them the easiest to do and I enjoy seeing how I can add my own creative touches to the given starting points.

I am not a fan of technique challenges because they focus on Photoshop techniques. Non-Photoshop users have to figure out work-arounds using their software to approximate the technique. During MOC, these are the most stressful challenges and usually my least-liked pages.

 

Technical is my top choice, followed by scrap lift, template and recipe. I don’t find scrap lifts limiting because I really try to make them my own ... where you can still tell that it was inspired by the original page, but it’s distinctly my style. I take the same approach with templates. I almost always modify templates.

 

I chose technical and recipe but if I could have a third, it would be inspiration.

 

I picked recipe and journaling. I like the recipe challenges because someone else is telling me what to use and I don't overthink everything so much. Lol. And I love to journal so.... yeah.

But mostly I like any challenge that gets me to scrap a memory or moment of life.

 

I chose technical & art journaling. I love them all but I have been scrapping for so long that I like the challenge to try something new. I do almost all of the challenges each month including the designer challenges. I even will go to other websites and find their challenges to come back and create here. I love the challenges of MOC and wouldn't mind if you recycle some of them during the other months. My least favorite are those that limit the subject to something specific.

 

Template and scraplift are the easiest for me and yet I am least likely to love the result, especially when there is only one photo or very small photo spots. I scrapbook to marry my photos and journaling so I want to showcase those.
I love this month's mood board for the inspiration challenge, just because I can get very creative or not.
I have enjoyed the technique challenges in MOC but would not love that every month. It takes longer and because i have PSE 13 not everything PS works and not all the work arounds work.
Journaling is my favourite and energises me to collate photos and get that story documented.

 

I have thought this too!

 

Same! Poor choice I made with the word "limiting." I almost always modify templates too (to the extent that I LOVE the MOC challenge to combine 2 templates; also, I have often taken just a piece of out of a template to use, like a filmstrip or photo mask), and similarly I'm pretty good at taking just an element from someone else's page for scraplift inspiration. I just want to make my own pages and not start with someone else's page. Templates are more enjoyable than scraplifting for me -- templates are not a complete page already -- and I despise quick pages so much I delete them if I happen to get one in a kit or something. It's a hierarchy for me: templates>scraplifting>quickpages.

 

While I love all kinds of challenges, I picked template and recipes as my top two favorites!!

 

i'm happy with all of them when i have time but my faves are
recipes -so i don't think too much;
& scraplift - because it's almost as quick and easy as a template but there's a bit more scope usually because there's a whole person or gallery to lift from

 

Template and scraplift for me for sure.

If I could add something else or more of something it would be slow scraps, being in a vastly different time zone chats and speed scraps are often hard to attend