You Can't Take It With You... Or Can You? Or Better Yet, Should You?

Yes, I'm talking about the age old question about what to pack for a scrapbooking crop!  I seem to be getting better and better and taking less and less with me to an all day crop -- but I feel that I could do so much better.  So, I'm not only typing this to help you with my organizational skills, I'm hoping that it will help me plan for my next all day crop.

Try to get back to the basics.  How many pages can you get done during an all day crop?  Do you want to actually FINISH the page or would it pain you too much to have to finish it at home?  Do you have a scrap-room (like I do) to finish your pages at home?

Here are some of the basics that you will need to remember:

1.  Your PHOTOS!  (Don't do what I did one time and leave home without your photos!)
2.  Adhesive
3.  Paper trimmer and scissors
4.  Markers and/or pens
5.  Paper
6.  Embellishments

One thing you may want to do is put together "page kits".  If you take the time to put together page kits during 15 minute blocks of time at home, it will help you be more organized and get more done when you sit down at the crop.  You will also end up bringing less to a crop because you won't be bringing all of your paper and all of your embellishments.

For my page kits, I use Page Planners by Cropper Hopper that were designed for that -- you can get them in your local scrapbook store.   You could also get the huge ziplock bags that are big enough for your 12x12 paper to fit into.  If you take 10-15 minutes a day or every couple days to put these together, you will end up with enough page kits to bring with you to a crop.  I developed my own planner page to put with each kit so that I know what I planned for each page.  You will put the papers you want to use, stickers, embellishments, photos and go ahead and cut out your die cuts ahead of time to put in your page kits.

Of course, if you don't have time to make up your page kits, you could just bring everything with you!  I hope my suggestions above will help save you time and get you a little more organized.

Happy Scrapping!