What I learned by doing MOC 6

This is the first year that I've worked FT outside the home while doing MOC so I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to finish all 31 pages in time.

Now I did go to a crop with my mom for my birthday and got 8 pages done that way but otherwise I learned that if I want something badly enough, I can get it done whatever it takes.

I can do anything for 31 days -- scrapping or otherwise.

I do have 2 more pages to do & will be at work today for 12 hours but I am determined to finish!

 

I learned to read instructions much more carefully & that I'm not perfect!

I already knew I'm TLP family, but I learned that I do have a voice. @mrs2a50 meant so much to me when I was ready to pack it in. That's really important to me because sometimes I feel like I'm just not enough around this place.

I already knew, but saw again, just how much talent is out there. I'm in awe.

 

I know Julie, thanks.

 

This was I believe my 4th time doing MOC and frankly I almost decided not to because in past years, it stressed me enormously. Since I was diagnosed with high blood pressure last year, there is no way I can let my hobby get stressful. Late December, the excitement of MOC started getting to me so I promised myself that I would participate if and only if, I didn't care if I got all the challenges done thus preventing unhealthy stress. That attitude turned out to be what enabled me to get all the challenges done. Moreover, I only had a couple of corrections to make because I calmer when I read each challenge.

 

This brought tears to my eyes. VICTORY!!!!!

 

You rock!! I love making ATCs but never thought about doing something like that! Grats on your prize!

 

I learnt some new techniques, and discovered some "new" aspects to my software. The now and then layout has encouraged me to tell stories that span time. Both doing DYD and the document your day challenges has helped me to scrap about daily life, not just about events and occasions. I guess I might be checking out the Project Life stuff and maybe do something each month - not every day, but maybe either a month in review type of thing or random days.

 

@bonnenuit Thank you so much for starting this thread! I've been thinking about this topic a ton the past couple of weeks and was thinking of starting a similar thread but felt too shy, so I am very glad you created the space for this conversation.

This month of MOC has been revelatory for me. I can't even remember all the different things I've noticed I've learned but here's what I can think of at the moment:

The magic of challenges. Before this month I didn't really "get" challenges. I thought they were maybe nice as community participation activities but I never felt drawn to participate because I already have a ton of my own pages I want to do and don't have time for. Being dedicated to completing the MOC challenges revealed all kinds of cool ways challenges can expand and uplift my scrapbooking.
- Challenges can provide impetus to tell stories that are hard to tell - I wrote about things I originally thought I couldn't put into words because the sadness or poignancy was too great. Journaling challenges encouraged me to tell the full story, not just make a page that would provide a little reminder of it to those who already know the story, and these longer stories will probably be much more meaningful to future readers.
- Challenges can spark me to document things I never would have known how to do a layout for. I made several pages during MOC that were about things that are important to me, that have been on my mind (e.g. #millionsmissing, my new love of Crocs and how that relates to getting older, my recent realizations around how I've been impacted by pressures to be feminine in a particular way) but I don't think I would have known how to make a scrapbook page about them. But starting from the challenge, "Ok, I need to make an art doll..." let the concept connect to the format, rather than trying to think of a format to express the concept. Very cool!

The magic of constraints. I have historically been a REALLY slow scrapper. Back when I was doing Project Life regularly my two-page spreads might take me days or weeks to complete. It just wasn't sustainable. I would read about people who sat down and made their spread in two hours on a Sunday and have no idea how that could ever be possible. Part of the issue is that I get "analysis paralysis" and every decision takes me so long. And digital scrapbooking is constant decisions! What photos to use, how to edit them, what to write, what font to write it in, what SIZE font to write it in, what product to use, where to place it, and so on FOREVER. MOC offered a bunch of different constraints that provided structure, and my scrapping got much, much faster.
- Only being able to use TLP kits, while daunting at first, turned out to be a very useful constraint. I copied every TLP product I have to one folder, and set it up so I could just quickly tab through the 40 or so product previews. This meant whether I started with a photo or a kit or theme or a color I could usually settle on a kit or kits pretty fast. I also created a "neutrals" folder with fasteners, stitches, paint, and other neutral elements to draw from for all my layouts, which was much faster than looking through kits or doing what I usually do when I don't have something I need for a page, which is make it from scratch.
- Knowing I’d be reusing the kits (since I had a constrained selection to start from) allowed me to make pages using just a few things from a kit, rather than trying to get everything I loved in that kit onto my page. I made a layout using only blue and white papers and elements from a kit and love how it turned out! It never would have occurred to me to do that back when I was more in a "one layout per kit" mentality.
- Before this month I felt like using a template was cheating or showed that I was not creative. I almost always use a template, which meant I had some serious imposter syndrome going, as a non-creative cheater scrapper. Having challenges that required us to use templates, and then seeing so many incredibly creative scrapbookers in the gallery using templates even for regular layouts, was so freeing for me! And once again, starting with a small batch of templates, mostly just my TLP ones and then a handful of others I thought might be fun, helped me make decisions quickly and then quickly get things going on the page.

The magic of minimalism. This month I really took the time to analyze the minimalist and "clean & simple" pages that always catch my eye in the gallery. I examined these pages closely to try to understand what makes them so appealing to me, and then experimented with implementing those design elements. I was making so many pages that it didn't feel "wasteful" to risk ending up with a meh layout, which is what I worry will happen when I try the minimalist look. One result of my experiments is now I am addicted to a simple white background! Pink Reptile Design’s Fancy Whites paper set was my most-used MOC purchase and I anticipate using it long into the future.

The magic of motivation. It was SO great to have the motivation to try all these new things, in a setting where the reward of trying something new (completing the challenge, and being one step closer to completing MOC) outweighed the risk of trying something new (might end up with a page I don't like and feel I wasted my time). For example, I’ve always loved the look of but never made one of those giant flower/button headdress/tree mega-clusters, because it seemed like it would just take forever. I could easily have completed the art doll challenge without making a mega-cluster, but I decided to take this opportunity to go for it and loved it! And thanks to the magic of constraints I only had my 36 TLP kits to go through for flowers, rather than the daunting task of getting flowers out of every kit ever, so it didn’t even take that much time. [Does anyone know if there is a word for the kind of flower/button thing I am talking about, by the way? Mega-cluster is the best I've been able to think of but I don't know if that conveys to other people the look I am talking about.]

The magic of mindset. I forget, until I am doing something I've never done before, that doing something you've never done before actually changes how you are in the world, the way your brain works, what you attend to and notice, the connections you make that you never saw before. I could go on about this one in a bunch of different directions, but I'll just give one example. Somehow this month I started to discover things about Photoshop that had nothing to do with the challenges. For example, the other day while making a MOC layout I suddenly noticed that you can filter the Layers palette by different attributes of the layers - like filtering for adjustment layers, or layers that are hidden or not hidden - and it’s so incredibly useful! It made my Five Alpha challenge so much easier and saved me a ton of time. I have been using CS6 for years and never, ever noticed that before.

The magic of practice. I have never liked practicing, particularly that whole thing where you do something a bunch that you are bad at so you can get better. I was terrible at practicing my cello as a kid because I hated listening to myself play badly, I always hated writing multiple drafts of papers, and as a scrapbooker who can spend weeks on a single layout I don't like to venture far outside the box because it just kills me to spend all that time and end up with a page I don't like. And then it's a vicious cycle because I feel so much pressure to make a perfect page that of course it takes me a million years to make all those decisions! Well, MOC has been like scrapbook bootcamp, and I have practiced so hard! Thank you @lmccandless SO MUCH for your generosity with the $20 gift certificate as a reward for completing MOC. It provides this solid, tangible motivation that I think allowed me to get past my own resistance, like I could tell that part of myself, "it won't be a waste to make a page that's not perfect because if I just keep making them there's this other reward at the end." So I exercised my fast-scrapping, fast-decision-making, not-perfect-is-okay muscles and I think it is helping me find my way out of that vicious circle.

The Quick Selection tool. Yep, it gets its own section here. Thanks to @IntenseMagic for introducing it to me in an easy way. I had no idea how to use it before. It feels life-changing. Extract all the things!

The magic of gallery love. My main scrapbooking community has a pretty quiet gallery, and the gallery is not the focus of the community. This month in the Lilypad gallery has been such a sweet experience in giving and receiving layout love. It felt hard sometimes to take the time away from scrapping a layout to go and leave detailed feedback for people in the gallery (which is the kind I try to leave, letting people know some specific things I love about their page), but it also felt important (and sometimes a layout is just too incredible not to leave a comment). And the comments I received were the very best form of encouragement to keep going. Knowing I wasn't "scrapping into a vacuum" made all the difference in the world! I think there are even folks who intentionally go through and leave appreciation on layouts that haven't gotten any comments yet, which is the most wonderful gift. (@MrsPeel & @Mylinn are gallery love champions and I want to give them a special mention!)

Lastly, I learned it makes me very grumpy to be on the computer every day. I really hope I finish this year (2 challenges to go!) because I don’t think I’ll ever try to fully complete a MOC again. I need more offline time than I ended up with this month, and more time with my people and cooking and being out in the world. I have ZERO regrets about this month, it has been an incredible ride, and I learned so much. I would have paid money to take a class that promised me all the benefits I described above (although then I would have bought the class and never completed it... does anyone else know how that goes? ) However I am hooked on the MOC experience in general, and I look forward to enjoying many future years of MOC as a creative kickstart and community experience!

Throughout the month I've gotten hints from various forum mentions that MOC is a huge undertaking for the organizers, and I can absolutely believe that. So thank you thank you THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for this beautiful offering and for all the holding and support and encouragement and positive feedback along the way!

 

Yay!!! I'm so glad!

 

Random thoughts:

I learned how to organize better ahead of time. I rebel at too much structure, so I had to organize but leave myself some flexibility too. I made about 10 folders of photos that I knew I wanted to work on this month, and drew from those photos in most cases. Limiting my choices of photos saved me some decision making. I also did this with my kits. I have my TLP kits in their own folder, alphabetically by kit. The kits that I thought would go best with the groups of photos, I re-named with AAA in the title, so they'd pop up to the top of my alphabetical list. I did use other photos and other kits, but this is where I started.

I learned that I can keep a positive attitude even on challenges that are not in my comfort zone. This year, I decided that no matter how scary, or hard, or not-my-style a challenge was, I was going to make it fun. No complaining. No dreading. If I got to that point, I knew I needed to re-think participating in challenge month. I'm proud of my attitude this month. That probably sounds silly, but it's a big deal to me.

I learned that by scanning briefly through the layouts on the challenge threads, it was much easier for me to approach challenges that were hard for me. I saw so much creativity, things I would never have thought of. And when I look at 50 or 60 interpretations of a challenge, it expands my ideas of what to do, without overly copying any one artist.

 

The dispersion and mosaic techniques were new to me. I also enjoyed being "forced" to make some non-pocket pages -- it helped me remember how fun it is just to create for the sake of creating, not necessarily to keep up with a project like project life.

 

This was my first challenge and I'm so happy I decided to participate. What I learned:
1. Justified text and content aware...hello!
2. Some of the most difficult challenges were the pages I now treasure the most.
3. I need to place a bit more effort and thought into how I want to tell a story. I've always documented but there's a big difference between documenting and storytelling. The journal challenges were some of my favorite.
4. Just how friendly and amazingly talented members are at the Lilypad. I knew the gallery would be busy with so many members participating in the challenge but was (and am) impressed at how many people take the time to comment and connect. Lots of positive energy on this site!!!
5. That if I participate in next year's challenge I need to freeze my bank card or not visit the gallery. I'd see a layout I liked, go to comment and strangely that little pink link would lead me right to the store to place another "must have" kit into my cart.

 

@sbee couldn’t agree more with number 5.....I’d hate to see all my TLP transactions from January

 

I enjoyed the styles that Mommyish put on offer - that and her special pricing meant I learnt and shopped more than I would have. Probably my biggest "take-home".
I agree about the journaling too and hope to carry that into the next year of layouts.

 

I loved reading this and finding out about what you had learned, such a positive post! I never used to journal much either (ask @MrsPeel ) but after a while I came to enjoy it. I don't journal on every layout but when I do I don't struggle with it as much as I used to. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!

 

Oh yes! How could I have forgotten to mention that on my list? A KEY part of this month's learning and growth. The videos @mommyish made taught me how to use her styles as they were intended to be used, so much more creatively than I could ever figure out on my own - I even learned how to use some styles I'd bought ages ago but never really made work for me. I want to go back and watch them all again when I have more time to really play with and practice (the magic of practice, yeah!) each style so I can internalize how they work. And I'll never forget having just learned about how to use the Furry style and brush so I had them on hand when I needed to make some armpit hair

 

I read this 3 or 4 times, and at first I thought you were saying something but now I think you are saying something else.....when you say you are not enough around this place....
do you mean you don't spend much time here, am I right?

also, you were ready to "pack it"???????!!!!!!????? MOC?
oh Jess, I hope that I had the voice to tell you how much we love you, and how much of a voice you have here!!!!!!
and I couldn't do without my sister.!!!!!