The artist’s hunt for inspiration is a never ending journey and is one that I take very seriously. Even if you scrapbooked every day, you are bound to have days where you are feeling less than inspired or ready to create. Sometimes you just need a little push or a starting point to guide you when you are ready to create. Claudine Hellmuth’s new book, The Scrapooker’s Creativity Kit, is filled with prompts and ideas to jump-start your layouts. I was excited to be included on this review and of course ready to play!

For this review I received The Scrapbooker’s Creativity Kit by Claudine Hellmuth. The kit consists of an 80 page 6″x6″ book, thirty 2″x3″ color cards, & thirty 2″x3″ word prompt cards. The book and the card decks come packaged in a 7.1″x9.1″ box with an extremely smooth exterior, and an a plastic insert on the inside to hold the book and cards in place. The box is easy to open and the plastic insert can also be removed. The book included with the kit, also has a very smooth and pleasant to touch exterior and each of the pages are medium in weight, smooth, and very sturdy. The book includes a note about the author, a list of the design team and other project contributors, a section on how to use the kit, 71 pages filled with design team interpretations of six different prompts and gallery projects, design team bio’s, and a source guide.

Each of the project pages feature beautiful and exquisite project photos in full color, along with a supply list and notes about the design team’s process. The color cards come with a different color on each side so you have a total of 60 colors to choose from. There are actually more if you count the outside perimeter of each color card because it is a shade darker than the main color on the middle of the card. The word prompt cards have a total of 4 different words each. There are two words on each side, one on top and one on bottom, and also several small graphics representing the word. You get a total of 120 word prompts and all of the cards have the same sturdiness as a regular playing card. The idea behind the kit, is for the owner to shuffle each deck and then choose one or two cards from the stack of colors, and also use the word prompt that is facing up after being drawn from it’s deck.

After drawing your cards, you try to create a project that has to do with the colors and word you picked. You can choose to portray the guides however you wish as they are meant to act as a starting guide. The entire ScrapFriends review team decided to use the same set of colors and a chosen word for their first two projects. The first set of cards I had to work with consisted of the colors hot pink, an almost sea foam grey turquoise, and the chosen word was “Year”. I dug through my paper stash looking for patterned papers containing these colors and to my surprise I had some great choices.

I have to admit that I have a huge paper stash and I usually tend to reach for the new papers every time I create a layout. However, using these cards as my color reference I found papers I had long forgotten about so I thought it was a major plus right off the bat since the cards inspired me to use up some of my older products! I was also able to pick out page embellishments quicker than normal because I was looking particularly for items that matched my color scheme. I usually spend a while looking for papers and embellishments to use on a layout, however this layout came together very quickly. I was very happy with the end result and had I not been inspired by the cards I may have never thought to use these colors with my daughter’s birthday pictures.

Charlie's Five

Charlie's Five

Products used:
Inspiration for Layout (Memory Makers Books: The Scrapbooker’s
Creativity Kit by Claudine Hellmuth)
Patterned Paper (Luxe)
Ghost Letters (Heidi Swapp)
Dimensional Pearls (Ranger)
Pen (American Crafts)
Felt Butterflies (Heidi Swapp)
Rhinestones (Wal-Mart)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

The chosen word for our second set of cards was “Wisdom”, and the colors were a navy blue and pea like green. I take a ton of photos during the year and save several of them in a folder called “2 Be Scrapped”. I have never really scrapped in chronological order, I just choose a photo that inspires me at that moment or one that I have the perfect idea for. There are lots of photos I intend to scrapbook, but I often put them to the side because I’m not really sure what I want to do with them. I think the Scrapbooker’s Creativity Kit is the perfect solution for this! I have been saving this photo of my husband and his grandmother on the 4 wheeler for quite a while because I couldn’t figure out a good design or title for it. After looking through my “2 Be Scrapped” photos and keeping my colors and word in mind, it was almost like an “aha” moment when I came to this picture. It didn’t take me very long to find patterned papers and embellishments that coordinated with my theme and the design of the layout seemed to flow easily. The words you choose randomly from the deck can be used or interpreted in a number of ways and in this case it really helped me convey what the picture meant to me.

Wisdom...

Wisdom...

Products used:
Cardstock (Prism Prismatics)
Inspiration for Layout (Memory Makers Books: The Scrapbooker’s
Creativity Kit by Claudine Hellmuth)
Patterned Paper (Daisy D’s, & Cosmo Cricket)
Chipboard (Scenic Route, & 7gypsies)
Stickers (Basic Grey, & Making Memories)
Glitter Glue (Ranger: Distress Stickles)
Metal Clips (7gypsies)
Pen (American Crafts)
Jewel Brad (Karen Foster)
Rub Ons (American Crafts)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

I got to choose my own colors and word for my third layout. The first two colors I chose were a rosy pink and soft purple. I am going to admit that I cheated a little with my word…the first card I picked had the word “Character” on it. Well I wasn’t really feeling that at the moment, so I put it back in the deck, shuffled the cards, and then chose again. Guess what? The next card I chose was the exact same one! So then I figured okay I guess it was meant to be and I went to search my photos. Again I found a photo I had been saving for almost two years because I knew someday I had to scrap it, but it was slightly blurry and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to say about it. The word I almost neglected to use was now the most perfect word for this photo! The look on my daughter’s face is exactly how I would describe her character which is as happy as can be. The colors I had chosen were very inspiring and I had this overwhelming sense of joy after finishing this layout.

Happy As Can Be

Happy As Can Be

Products used:
Cardstock (Prism Prismatics)
Inspiration for Layout (Memory Makers Books: The Scrapbooker’s
Creativity Kit by Claudine Hellmuth)
Patterned Paper (Making Memories, & Best Creations)
Rub ons (Scenic Route, & Hambly)
Die Cuts (Jenni Bowlin, & Daisy D’s)
Rhinestones (Heidi Swapp)
Rubber Band (7gypsies)
Brads (Queen & Company)
Glitter Glue (Ranger)
Pen (American Crafts)
Clear Ribbon (Maya Road)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

Sometimes you have moments when inspiration just hits and you feel like you are on a roll. And then there are those times when you have free time to create, but maybe you feel like nothing is working…or like you have lost your creativity…or maybe your spouse, children, job, and housework have just overwhelmed you for the week and you would rather not have to think at all. In my opinion, The Scrapbooker’s Creativity Kit by Claudine Hellmuth is the perfect solution to get your creative juices flowing. You just pick a color or two and a word card from the deck and all of the sudden you have something to work with. When you have a little direction it’s amazing how much quicker your imagination starts to kick in.

There are an endless amount of color combos you could create by using this deck and a ton of prompt words to interpret however you desire. I do wish that the plastic insert on the inside of the kit box was designed to hold the deck of cards in place a little better. The cards shift easily whenever you move the box so when you open it there are cards everywhere. However a simple rubber band around each deck will do the trick and it had no bearing on my opinion of the actual product itself. I enjoyed looking through the book and it was interesting to see how all of the artists came up with totally different takes using the same colors and words. I think this book would be beneficial to both beginning and advanced scrapbookers, and would I recommend it to everyone!

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Claudine Helmuth