Scrapbooking Articles Tips & Ideas

When you decide that you want to begin scrapbooking, to organize your memories in an appealing manner, it can be hard to decide what to do and how to do it. Scrapbooking stores offer so many materials and accessories that until someone helps you focus your creativity, you might not know where to begin.

This is exactly why many scrapbooking supply shops offer classes that can help beginners learn new techniques for scrapbooking their own memories. For a very low cost, the experts in the shop can help you focus on one theme, and one specific layout, as well as providing the materials that you will need to make it.

One of the best advantages of these classes is that they tend to offer seasonal lessons. For example, a few months before Christmas, you will begin to learn how to make different Christmas layouts, so that when you gather your Christmas pictures and memories, you will be full of ideas on how to display those things.

Another plus for these classes is that ideas beget ideas, so that once someone shows you how to put together a certain type of layout, you can do variations on that layout that are only limited by your imagination. A Christmas layout can be modified to make a Valentine’s Day, 4th of July, or Halloween layout. A first day of school layout can be adjusted slightly to become a first date, first anniversary, or first day of college display.

In addition to all these helpful aspects of taking scrapbooking classes, you can also get to know people who share an interest with you. In addition to learning ideas from professionals, you can make friends and share ideas with them as well.

There are as many different sizes of scrapbooks as there are sizes of photo albums. Beginners sometimes don’t know where to begin with all the choices they have, but there are a few standard sizes that can make thing easier when you go to buy paper and supplies.

- 12 x 12. This size is a bit larger than a typical photo album, but the size allows you to express your creativity to its fullest. You can also get more room to put photos on each page, and most scrapbooks allow you to add pages as you go on.
- 8 ½ x 11. This size is a more standard album and can easily support a single focused theme or idea in its layout. They are also very easy to find, since they are sold either as standard photo albums or in places where you can get standard albums.

There are many other, less standard sizes that many people enjoy using as well.

- 14 ½ x 12 5/8. This is a much larger book and allows for spread out and complex layouts. A drawback, though, is that most of these books come with a set amount of pages and refills can be hard to find.
- 5 x 7. This smaller book is ideal for 3×5 or 4×6 photos.
- 5 ½ x 8 ½. This book is the same width but half the height of the 8 ½ x 11 book.
- 8 x 8. This book is a smaller square than the 12 x 12, but allows for some of the same designs on a smaller scale.
- 6 x 6. This is an even smaller square, but still just right for focusing your layout on one perfect image.

For a creative kid, few things could be more fun than a scrapbooking birthday party. It gives her and her friends a chance to use their ideas, skills, and her imaginations to create something she’s not only proud of, but she can keep forever.

Most scrapbooking stores, even the smallest ones, offer some kind of birthday party package for kids of a certain age. Most shops start at about age 6, and tailor their programs and choices for kids up to age 16 or so. A skilled scrapbook shop owner can adjust her activities for each age group, and be assured that each child will have such a good time that they will return again and again for years to come. The kids themselves will learn the basics of scrapbooking, and be introduced to a means by which they can preserve their most precious memories for the rest of their life. And of course, everyone will have a great time.

A scrapbooking party can vary in cost depending on what materials the party plans to use and what the kids will be give to take home. A relatively inexpensive party could cost $5 per child, and the person in charge could show them how to make a single page or double page layout to take home with them to save or to insert in an existing scrapbook. Some shops also offer a board book, which is very much like a child’s thick-cardboard paged board book, except that the children get to decorate it and put in the pictures they want. These are ideal ways to create scrapbooks for each grade’s school pictures, and the cost for the party is usually about $10 per child.

Some more extravagant parties allow the children to take home a full scrapbook of varying sizes, and the party’s activities include creating the layouts for the first several pages of this scrapbook. This gives all the children precious memories of the day’s celebration, and a good beginning for any scrapbooks they want for their future.

Nothing demonstrates more clearly how much your children have grown and changed than starting a new grade. As they walk off (alone!) to first grade, you can’t help but remember one year ago, when they were four inches shorter, had all their baby teeth, and strutted off to school as proud as little peacocks at the new phase in their life, officially becoming “big kids.” It’s the same every year, when parents hastily wipe away tears and remember the changes that have happened in just 12 short months.

School pictures can show the differences in face and hair, but nothing beats your own photos of the big day. The following are some tips that will help you select and create the best back-to-school layout for your memories.

Start early. Getting ready for school to start actually takes weeks. You and your kids shop for school supplies and new clothes, for example; these are yearly rituals that change even while they remain the same. Take pictures of your shopping expeditions, show the four different backpacks your son couldn’t decide between, and let your daughter model all (or at least some) of her new clothes. You might even include those school supply lists in your layout.

The morning of. Some night-before organization will free you to take pictures as your kids get ready for school on the first day. Consider a picture of their first 1st grade breakfast, their first 7th grade hair-do, or climbing into their first car on their way to their junior year.

Dates. Make sure to include dates on or near every photo you take. Have your kids pose while holding signs with “August 2008″ or “8th Grade,” on them. Make a banner with the year and drape it across the dining room table as the kids eat. The last thing you want to do after all this work is to confuse the first days of a child’s 6th and 7th grade.

After you take such great pictures, you can then place them into the layout of your choice!

One of the most interesting and imaginative categories of scrapbooking “toys” is the cutters. These include scissors, hole punches, edgers, shape cutters and trimmers. These tools can help you add new layers of creative expression to your layouts that you could do without them.

Scissors. Scrapbooking scissors come with different patterns so that you can present your photos with beautifully worked trim. Of course, a good pair of basic scissors is a must for any scrapbooker, to fit your photos and papers to the size, shapes and patterns you need.

Hole punches. Hole punches can be a simple circle that allow you to put a layout page in a binder, or they can do their job in different shapes, such as hearts, ovals, or diamonds. It’s one more way to dress things up and make them a little nicer.

Shape cutters. These work on a principle similar to hole punches, but the things they punch are bigger and more elaborate. You can do hearts, diamonds, ovals, rectangles, or flowers of any size, or entire words or elaborate designs to form borders in two or more colors.

Trimmers. Trimmers are designed to cut off the sharp corners of your cut-outs and to replace them with a prettier, more elegant design to accent your layouts. This makes them ideal for matting and for layering colors and textures on your page.

Exacto Knifes. Great for getting an exact cut and great precision with cardstock, cut-outs and other materials.

If you are a beginner, you have a whole world of scissors and other cutter to discover. But if you’ve been at this for a while you already know that using the right cutting tool can make the different between a nice page and a beautiful one.

Look at Modzy’s Scrapbooking Tools

One of the joys of scrapbooking is going to the store and looking through all the paper. It’s great fun to take a few of your favorites, pair them with embellishments, and imagine what you might do with them. But sometimes you know exactly what you need; you don’t need to browse, you just need to get it.

In order to get that exact paper in your mind, all you need is a computer and a color printer. You can get your own paper right from the computer through one of two different methods.

One way is to go to a scrapbooking site and download their designs. Some sites requires you to buy your paper, though it usually costs less than it would at a scrapbooking store, but some sites offer their designs for free. You simply download them to your computer and print them up on your color printer. Once you have them in your computer, you are free to alter colors or patters according to your layout needs.

Another way to print up your own scrapbooking paper is to use the paint or draw functions on your computer. Your computer itself comes with a huge palette of colors that can be shaded or organized into pleasing patters that are just right for your needs.

Even if you don’t have a color printer, you still have some options in paper. You can create or download designs in black and white that will complement your photos. You can go to a copy store and print out your designs there. Or you can simply do your designs online and import your digital pictures to the designs.

If you are an accomplished scrapbooker, you’ve put in many hours experimenting with layouts, colors, placements, and accessories. You’ve discovered some great ideas and thrown out some that didn’t work so well. You might even have reached the point where every time you go through a pile of photos, you arrange them in your mind in to pleasing displays.

These are skills that others could benefit from, especially beginners who aren’t sure how to bring together all their choices in materials with all the photographs and other memorabilia they have. These beginners often look with envy at the things you do and wonder if they will ever be able to do anything that nice. From your point of view, you know that all it would take for them to focus their creativity is someone to show them a few basics.

That someone could be you. If your community has a scrapbooking shop, you could show the owner some of your material and offer to teach classes a day or two a week. In small towns, the owners themselves usually teach such classes, but small business owners have so many other things to do, they may be grateful for the extra help-especially since you would be paid by the students, not by the store.

If your town doesn’t have such a store, you could offer classes in your own home for a few friends at a time. In the same way that some people have Tupperware or Pampered Chef parties, you could hold classes. You yourself would supply the materials and your class could sit around your kitchen or dining room table…perhaps your church or school would even allow you to use their space on a Saturday morning or weeknight to gather your students.

If you’ve been at this for a long time, you know things that others would really like to know. It could benefit both you and those beginners for you to offer your skills in whatever way you can.

If you want to begin scrapbooking, it doesn’t matter how many creative ideas you have in your mind, you can’t begin there. You have to start by sorting your photos and other memorabilia-the things you want to save and remember through the years of your family’s life.

You don’t have to organize them all at the same time, of course, but you really do have to take at least a select few and put them in some kind of order so that you know which ones you want to put in a layout and which ones most truly represent that time in your family’s life.

Here are a few ways you can organize your materials:

By date. If you have a large number of photos and materials to organize, chronology can be your friend. Start with several gallon-sized plastic bags, the kind with the seals, and label them each with a different date. Just the act of going back through your things will trigger memories and help you to figure out where you want to start with your layouts. Some people like to start with the most recent memories and work backward, and some people start in the distant past and work forward.

By event. You know you have photos of that family vacation, your sister’s wedding, or your nephew’s school play; pick an event and pull out the photos. You can then create your layouts based on that one important event.

By family member. Of course you want a few big scrapbooks for your whole family, but each child could also have his or her own scrapbook as well. Once you have filled a child’s scrapbook with special memories from that child’s life, it can then become an excellent gift what that child is married or has a child of their own.

Although many scrapbooking supply shops do offer to hold birthday parties for children, you don’t have to go to someone else’s establishment for a great party. Even if you are a beginner, you can host a great birthday party for your child at home. The following at some tips to get you started in planning your child’s party.

Decide what photos you want to use. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask each child to bring some favorite family photos with them to the party. Another possibility is to ask each child to bring enough wallet-sized copies of their school picture so that each attendee gets one, and you can help them make a layout of the whole group. Of course, with a digital camera and color printer, you can simply take pictures at the party and print up several copies of each. This may be the most convenient option, and this way the layout can center around memories of the party.

Buy a lot of supplies…but not too many. Most kids are impressively creative when given choices to work with, but they also tend to freeze up when give too many choices. Give them a lot to work with within a narrow boundary. For example, buy five base sheets, and let them choose which ones they like best. Don’t buy a hundred! If the theme is school friends, buy many school-themed accessories, but don’t buy other themes. If it’s a party theme, only buy party accessories…but buy enough to give them many things to choose from and to exercise their natural creativity.

Clear space. This might be a good time to put a leaf in the dining room table…and then to cover it with a vinyl table cloth! You’ll need room to spread out, but you don’t want to do glue or scissors damage to your good furniture. However, you also don’t want to pack several kids in too tightly. It’s also nice to put everyone at the same table, rather than separating them at smaller tables.

Sometimes a creative layout only needs a few well-chosen words to tie the whole theme together. Since family and family events are some of the major themes of any scrapbook, I thought I’d offer a few quotations you could use on your family pages.

There is just one way to bring up a child in the way he should go and that is to travel that way yourself. -Abraham Lincoln

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

–Johann Schiller

The family is a haven in a heartless world.

–Christopher Lasch

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. –Author Unknown

You don’t choose your family They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

–Desmond Tutu

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. –Barbara Bush

In time of test, family is best. –Burmese Proverb

The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst. –Marge Kennedy

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces. ~George Santayana, The Life of Reason

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family –Anthony Brandt

A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.

–Chinese Proverb

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

–Margaret Fuller

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family? –Marmontel Gretry

In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future. -Alex Haley

A happy family is but an earlier heaven. –John Bowring

Any of these short quotations can be neatly written or computer-printed and displayed in your layout to show how you feel about the beloved people in your pictures.