4 Steps to Crafting Success

Do you feel like you can never seem to complete your crafting projects? You love your crafty hobbies, but no matter what you do, you have a pile of unfinished projects. In an effort to push reset on my crafting hobbies in the new year, I’m using the method in the article to set myself up for crafting success!

Follow along with me and lets restart our crafting hobby and show up for what we love to do most! I also have a quick one-sheet FREE printable to implement this method. You can get at the end of this post to help you set yourself up for crafting success.

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1. Make Space in Your Life for Crafting

Making space for a hobby you love in your life seems pretty simple right? But how many times have you lost your supplies, set aside a project to gather dust, or showed up to your crafting space just to take one look and turn around. Crafting can be overwhelming when you haven’t set yourself up for success!

You MUST make space for your crafting and scrapbooking hobbies physically and mentally. Yep, you heard that right, it takes mental mindset to get your crafty mojo on.

Remove the Physical Clutter from Your Crafting Space

First lets address the physical space around you. If your desk, table, or crafting space looks like a craft-storm rolled through, then it’s time to clear the decks! But don’t let this hold you back. Keeping your space organized is important, but don’t let a simple task of cleaning off your desk turn into hours of distraction. Trust me, I’ve been there and never got to the fun part of crafting!

So instead, set yourself a timer. Get that space cleaned up and cleared off in 15 minutes or less!

Remove the Mental Block from Your Creative Mindset

Next up, it’s time to take action on that mindset. Now that your space is clear, I want you to make time on your calendar for creating. Whether it is daily, weekly, once a month, or every couple of days. Decide on a time and book it on your calendar. Be sure to make it a recurring meeting. Set a reminder in your phone and let your family know this is YOUR time. Whatever you need to do to create that habit, you must do it!

It’s up to you if family can join in with your crafting time or if it’s exclusively your zen time. YOU MAKE THE RULES! (It’s ok to change the rules over time too.) However, the #1 most important part about your creative mindset is making sure you are prioritizing your hobby. Don’t cancel your “appointment”. If your kids are joining is too stressful, then set aside a separate time for crafting with them.

This is time for you to find joy, be creative, and fill up your cup so that you can give yourself to everything else that you do in your life.

2. Make a Short List of Crafting Projects

This next step to make a short list of crafting projects is important. Notice the emphasis on short! We all have a list of projects that we’ve always wanted to make and that list grows every day. But that list can get very long and may be hard to look at it without feeling overwhelmed. That master list is a great way to get your ideas on paper to save for later.

Instead, the list I want you to make right now is going to be short. Pick 2 or 3 projects that come to mind that you’ve been wanting to create. These projects might even be on your master list. If you focus on projects that are at the top of your mind, you will be more likely to finish them because they are fresh in your head.

Grab a post-it note or scrap paper and write down no more than 4 projects you might want to work on. This should take only a couple of minutes.

craft project ideas listed on a post it note in steps to plan for creative success

3. Create a Craft Project Action Plan

Now that you have a few project ideas, it’s time to pick one to make an action plan. Look at your list of projects and start with one that seems to be the easiest to finish first. It might be the one that sparks the most excitement for you. Or it could be the one you have all the supplies for. Or it’s the one that you found most recently.

With that project in mind, let’s set up a creative action plan to set yourself up for crafting success. Here is where it’s going to take a little brainstorming and planning ahead. I notice a lot of what stops me from crafting is not having all the supplies I need. So when I finally do get some crafty mojo, I end up not doing anything. I don’t have my photos printed, supplies on hand, or can’t find the paper I bought 2 months ago. Then I’m back to square one.

Once I started creating an action plan for my projects, my time for crafting turned from a failed attempt to a successful sit down! All from this one method of creating an action plan.

I know this might sound crazy – it’s just a hobby after all, do you really need to plan ahead?? But I will tell you that it has helped me make layouts faster and complete projects. When I am able to get the idea written on paper, everything seems to go much faster. This method is also helpful if you are going away for a crafting weekend, tackling larger projects, creating the same item multiple times (think invitations), or using it to make items for your crafting business.

So how can you create an action plan easily? I’ve got an example down below that shows you how I use my planning sheet PDF. Sign up below to get the planning PDF worksheet. It’s available in my FREE Resource Library that I created just for subscribers to my newsletter.

Write Your Action Plan for Crafting Success

Use the Project Planning Worksheet and give yourself 15 minutes sketch out an idea for just ONE of the projects. Write down what supplies you need and begin to form an action plan. You don’t need to be extremely detailed, but write down some milestones and steps to get the project completed from start to finish.

Here’s an example of the steps I used to create my own lesson plan book using a Happy Planner.

Find old Happy Planner and measure paper size (note here ___________)
Purchase missing supplies from list – Etsy shop order
Check ink supply for printing and order more if needed
Add custom subjects to lesson plan template pages
Print customized lesson plan files *front and back*, test size to print for proper trimming (note print zoom size here ______)
Cut and punch lesson plan pages to fit Happy Planner
Create and punch custom dividers and add label tabs
Print and add school year attendance count and other tracking files (note print zoom size here _____)

project planning sheet for crafting projects

Use the Planning Sheet to make notes of major tasks or places where you might wait between steps (dry time, order time, etc.) Be sure to include anything that you need to do before you start creating your project.

Finish Planning Out Additional Projects

If you are in the brainstorming mode, go ahead and sketch out your other projects from Step 2. It doesn’t hurt to get these projects planned out so you can have them ready for future rafting sessions.

These action plan sheets are going to be gold, so keep them in a safe place. Check off the action items as you complete them. It will help you know where you left off for next time. Plus it will help you prepare projects if you are crafting away from your normal space.

4. Find Your Way to Crafting Success

You’ve just prepped at least one project (or more) in less than an hour. Way to go! You are ready to work through your first project and complete it. Project plan to Project Success!

With your crafting action plans in hand, you can easily see what to do next. When you want to map out a few more, you can follow these four steps again.

As you get the hang of preparing projects ahead of time, you will enjoy your creative time more when you can finish projects. And guess what… that Master Project List I mentioned before, you’ll be able to start trimming down that list. No longer will your master list frighten you, but instead you’ll be a craft project boss!

The next step is making sure you have all the supplies. If you are trying to find your way through your supplies, you can start here to work on using up your scrapbooking stash.