First, I should admit, I’m not really a fan of Elsie Flannigan’s style of scrapbooking. I’ve liked a few of her products from KI Memories but her layouts in general are too busy and random for my taste.

That said, when I saw her book 52 Scrapbooking Challenges available for 50% off at the store closing sale of my local AC Moore, I figured I would give it a try. (Amazon is selling it for $13.57 – 32% off the cover price – through the link above.) And I was pleasantly surprised at what I found inside.

Of course, the book is chock-full of Elsie’s layouts. So if you are a fan of her style you will love the book. But even if you aren’t, there are some beautiful layouts to be inspired by from the other scrapbookers who contributed to the book who have very different styles.

And the basic nuts and bolts of this book, at its core, is the list of challenges itself. They provide great starting points for layouts, and a few of them are even whole project inspiration. I’ve never been interested in starting an inspiration journal until I saw Challenge #25 on page 64. After seeing that journal I could easily envision its usefulness! Add that to the to-do list…

This book would be a fun way to help get past “scrapper’s block” by providing a starting point for designing a page, or could provide a great list of activities for a cropping group to play with together.

I know that Elsie’s style is kind of a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing for most people. Don’t let that turn you off of what is actually a pretty inspiring book if you look past that.