Creative Road Blocks.... and ways to get around them...

Hello... it has been far too long since I have posted. And this post, I am sad to say, will not have my bleach layout. It is still unfinished. I recently had a baby shower for a dear friend, so most of my time was spent there, and then I was trying to enter a design team contest... and that is where this post starts...
I wanted to enter the design team contest for GCD Studios. The deadline was last Saturday, and you had to have a short paragraph about yourself and 3-4 pictures of your best work. Simple enough. Well, I was not sure what I had that included their product, so I thought I would create a layout using their product and then include some of my other layouts that I love. I worked on this layout for a week & a half! I literally hit a "creative road block". It was awful! Needless to say, I did not enter the contest and have just been trying to win the battle over the "what do I do now?" syndrome.

How many of you have hit your own creative road block, or have in the past? It is frustrating, aggravating, and just plain un-inspiring! Here are some ways that you can bust through and come out loving your layout, and being excited that you were able to just finish it!!!

~Sketches: I love using sketches! What I find so great about them is that my layout never ends up looking anything like the sketch. I use them for inspiration. When you find yourself stuck, look at sketches, even if you didn't start from a sketch. My favorite places to get sketches is http://www.pagemaps.com/ Becky Fleck has some awesome sketches and an archive of them on her website.

~Quotes! Lyrics! Poems! : There are so many of these out there, and so many of them "speak to our hearts". I loving looking for inspiration from quotes, lyrics, & poems. I did a page once where I wrote out the lyrics to the Rascal Flatts song, "God Bless the Broken Road". It was my background for my layout. Journaling is very difficult for me, and looking to these help me get over that hurdle.

"Scrap-lifting" : Have you ever just seen a layout that just WOWs you? Or maybe a piece of a layout. Take inspiration from that and make it yours. Change it up a bit to make it fit your layout and colors... Look at magazines, books, the Internet.... there is so much out there from which to draw inspiration!

These are just a few things that help me... but if you really look INSPIRATION IS EVERYWHERE! Just the other day I pulled out a page from the Martha Stewart magazine... it was a picture of what you can do with dried leafs and flowers... I loved the colors, the shape of the leaves, it was just fabulous.

So, without further ado... here is my layout the took me forever to finish! I am happy with it and I think that it is fun...

and the journaling...