Each month The Lilypad*, a digital scrapbooking store/website, hosts a series of scrapbooking challenges and then gives out coupons for up to 30 percent off a purchase depending on how many challenges you complete. I’m not normally someone who participates in store challenges for two reasons: 1) You have to use a certain percentage of their product on your pages (understandably so, they are trying to maintain a small business) and 2) the incentive has never been enough to entice me. After scoping out the challenges at The Lilypad for a couple of months I finally decided to jump in and take them on because 1) I already buy and use a lot of Lilypad product (e.g. 5 of my 7 challenge pages feature almost exclusively product by One Little Bird) and 2) the discount is enticing to me because I spend money there anyway. Plus I like that you earn the award for straight up completing the challenges and not that your name get puts in a drawing for the award if you complete them.
April was my first month taking on the challenges and they were easier to complete than I anticipated. I originally set out to complete 6 challenges – because that earns you 30% off – but did the 7th challenge because I was inspired. Doing the 7th challenge gets your name put into a drawing for one of two guest creative team slots for a month. That would be fun, but the 30% off was the real draw. Here are all 7 pages together:
Three random, additional thoughts:
1) I found it a lot easier to stick with product from The Lilypad than I thought when I started the challenges. Part of that is I am increasingly buying more of their stuff and less stuff other places. I’ve become a big fan of the monthly Build Your Own Collab stuff. But it’s also partly because limiting myself is kind of nice creatively to keep myself from trolling ALL of my supplies for the perfect thing.
2) I often reminded myself that I didn’t have to make the best pages I’ve ever done, I just had to finish them. That was a strong motivating factor. My perfectionist tendencies can get out of control when creating pages for my creative team obligations, so it was nice to let go and just get stories told.
3) It was fun to have the challenge push me out of my usual process by starting with a slightly different approaches. Sure, they are still photo and story-centric, but how I got to that point was slightly different for each page. Plus looking at all 7 pages together I can see clear signs of my style coming through: neutral background paper mixed with bright multi-color patterned paper and several casual blocked designs.
Altogether this was fun – I will definitely be attempting to tackle the challenges again next month!
*Funny side note: Whenever I think of The Lilypad I pronounce it in my head as “the dash Lilypad” because their url is the-lilypad.com
