Stampers Corner Goodness

Would you look at all this stuff I won by sharing a tip? Many thanks to my yahoo group, Stampers Corner. OOPS! EDITED TO ADD: I completely forgot to add my winning tip, LOL. Okay, here is my tip:

This tip works for collages, atc's, greeting cards and scrapbook layouts -- anything needing to be laid out first before gluing down or securing. If you are like me, I get it all arranged like I want it, and then lose that perfect layout when I have to take all the parts of my piece off to start adhering it. One day I had the bright idea to take a photo of what I'd arranged before disturbing it, and it works wonders. I upload my photo and then display it on my monitor. This helps me remember certain points of intersection on my piece, as well as which layers go first, etc. And I found it also helps me see if the piece works or not before I go to all the trouble of gluing it down. If it doesn't, I get do-overs. Take a photo of each do-over, in case you want to go back to the first one you did if that one was the best after all. :-) If you don't create in front of your computer, just take your camera wherever you create and use it for your display. My daughter now does this to record her best outfits and accessories because she is so self-critical. The photos help remind her that, yeah, she did look pretty good in that.... :-)

I discovered this tip on my own (though I am sure I wasn't the first to discover it) when I saw this layout online in May of 2007 by Lucypeas: Trouble is, her style was so far out of my own comfort zone that I felt scared about attempting it. So, I laid the elements out to be able to get them all glued down the same way: The photo looked bare to me, which showed me that to complete my own style comfort I needed to give it a little of a more cluttered and textural look. Here's the finished layout: I've used this tip on several layouts since, and I think most of them are my best work. Maybe in some part this is why?