We are proud to present our first scrapbook submission from an avid reader of our scrapbook classroom blog. June from Arizona has two wonderful grandchildren and has dedicated her scrapbook for them. We have a great scrapbook page submitted which features the children during the Christmas holidays.
As you can see, these pages are very effective at conveying the mood and the cuteness of the holiday! There is great use of space and color. Care was made to glue down the photo so that there were no "lumps" so that the picture set on the "frame" would be perfectly flat. The picture was cropped perfectly and the "journal" caption was a great touch!
Feel free to submit your favorite scrapbook page and we will gladly post them here!
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At this time of year, May, it is the season of spring and graduation comencements and graduation parties. In keeping with the exciting spirit of this once in a lifetime event, many people are making graduation themed scrapbooks. Now is the time to buy your supplies.
Several things you should buy now are; graduation themed binder or the capability to theme in graduation theme, graduation themed photo matts, a lot of colored construction paper, graduation related 3-D hats-miniature diplomas, stencils, plenty of graphics such as pencils-school desks-school house-apples; just about anything related to a school theme.
When you buy all your supplies in advance, plan out your layout and also plan on how many pictures you are going to take at the graduation ceremony. You may think of taking as many as you can so you have the lattitude to crop some of them and make different shapes of them. Remember about the high quality of adhesives you will use that will not discolor or turn brittle. You want a glue that will not make ripples under your photos.
Don’t forget to write out as many journaling pieces that you can. The rest of your journaling will come from describing your experiences at the ceremony. Have fun with this theme…after all, this a memory you want to relive for many years, a time to be very proud!
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One of most often questions we get asked, is the journaling part of a scrapbook. For those newbies to scrapbooking, journaling is the "story" we tell along with the pictures or momentos on each scrapbook page.
As we all know, pictures tell a "thousand words," but sometimes, we have to help the casual reader with a text caption, just what the scrapbook page or scrapbook is all about! There are several ways to come up with great text content for your scrapbook.
First thing you can do is act as a TV news reporter. When looking at the picture you are about to mount in a page, pretend that you are interviewing the person whose picture it is and ask what happened here or where was the picture taken at. What was the reason for the people or place to be on that picture? You can go on to "ask" what kind of fun did you have? What adventure did you go through at that place? You get the idea.
Another great idea is to look at the picture and write a poem about it. You do not have to be a Robert Frost or Ernest Hemmingway, but simply, be yourself! The words do not have to ryhme, or even make sense! Just some short prose can liven up the picture at hand.
One last idea is to write a "letter" as if you were sending this scrapbook page to someone in an envelope. Remember at Christmastime when you received "picture" postcards in the mail? It would be on photo paper describing what plans they would have at Christmas, or a paper letter enclosed in an envelope with a photographed attached and the letter would be a brief description of what the family has been up to and what they intend on doing during the holidays.
So, when choosing each picture to add to the scrapbook, make sure you have a good idea of what you want to say. Remember, there is no rule that you have to comment on each and every scrapbook page, only enough to keep a "flow" going throughout the book.
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Next to making sure the photos you choose for your scrapbook will enhance the whole book, matting certainly comes in a solid second in the most important aspect of scrapbook design.
Once you have lined up all the pictures in your scrapbook theme, you should concern yourself with the type of matting that will be used to surround your pictures. Matting for years was used in painting, especially oil paintings, to fashionably "frame" the picture to give it more added value to the viewer. Some of the mattes were very ornate, others were simple and understated. Some blended in so well with the painting, that you didn’t even notice the matte was even there!
A good rule of thumb for matting your photos is to make sure the color of the matte, complements the picture and not over-powers it. In other words, say you are displaying pictures of a lake or body of water, a nice matte color could be a nice neutral blue color. Don’t forget to pay attention to scrapbook mattes that have a pattern in them. The pattern should complement the pictures as well. Use your good judgement on the color and pattern of your matte.
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Glue stick: Glue sticks are a cheap and easy way adhesive to use with photos, patterned paper, and colored cardstock. However, they can be somewhat messy. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with unsightly adhesive smudges on your layout.
Mounting squares: Mounting squares are a great adhesive to use on your photos, because they leave none of the messy residue associated with glue sticks.
Photo corners: Often used in heritage albums, photo corners are a good way to ensure that you’ll be able to remove photos from your scrapbook at a later date if necessary.
Liquid glue: Since it provides a strong and permanent bond, liquid glue is a good general purpose adhesive for scrapbooking. It works on photos, paper, and most lightweight embellishments, although it can take often take awhile to dry completely.
Glue dots: Glue dots are available in a variety of sizes, making them a smart choice for almost any type of dimensional scrapbook embellishment. If you want to use them with vellum, however, make sure you read the label carefully. Only certain types of glue dots are made to work with this transparent material.
Foam adhesive: If you’re interested in making customized paper piecing scrapbook embellishments, foam adhesive squares are an easy way to add dimension to your designs.
Double sided tape: Special double sided tapes designed for scrapbooking, such as Wacky Tac, are great for adhering beads, glitter, and other fine embellishments to your pages.
When buying adhesives, make sure they are acid free and archival safe. You would not want an adhesive that turns color, gets brittle or loses its "stickiness" with age.
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On August 2006 The Scrapbooking Industry commercially celebrated twenty-five years of existence which was stated by not other then Marielen W. Christensen of Keeping Memories Alive, the worlds first scrapbooking store was head quartered in Spanish Fork, Utah, USA, in 1981.
In 1976 Christensen began designing creative pages for her family’s photo albums creating her own memories. The conference at Salt Lake City opened the door to a massive interest in memory book designs in the United States, and Christensen was invited to give seminars and teach classes to countless groups, including Brighan Young University’s Camp Education Weed and numerous church, civic and school groups. During the twenty-five years following, she lectured continually throughout the Intermountain West.
Later in 1993 , The Christensen’s began a mail order division in the back of the building. The business grew very quickly by word of mouth there for they had to move its warehousing to a larger facility in 1994. They moved the shipping department to a larger ware house in 1998.
Keeping Memories Alice opened the first wholesale division in the scrapbook industry in 1993, providing other stores with a source to purchase products at one place. this helped move the industry forward as small scrapbook stores began opening up all over the United States.
Keeping Memories Alive made history again in 1996 as they launched the first commercial website for scrapbook supplies. Scrapbooking is now a multimillion dollar industry all around the world, Scrappers or scrapbookers get together and scrap at each others homes, local scrapbook stores, scrapbooking conventions, retreat centers and even cruises dedicated slowly to scrapbooking. These are a few of many great ways to learn tips and new ideas.
The above article taken from http://www.scrapbookartisan.com/moderndayscrapbooking.php
Scrapbooking got its start over 150 years ago. There are many variations of who really started scrapbooks, but the earliest records of scrapbooks was revealed in a publication by John Poole (from the UK) back in 1826. This book was a bound collection of poems and engravings. It was also a reference of how to collect and rearrange scraps.
In those days, scraps were printed pieces of paper with various ornate designes. The very first scrapbooks contained pressed flowers, paper cuts, feathers and other bits of memoriebilia. Scrapbooking became more popular in the middle class nineteenth century life.
A very popular type of scrapbook, "drawing room," scrapbook, was the center of social exchange and discussion for people during the mid eighteenth century. These were full of memories and stories of family members and activities.
Scrapbooking started to decline during World War 1. The recession caused scrapbooking businesses to close down.
During the mid to late 1800’s, various companies began producing leather bound scrapbook albums that included themed pages. Most common designs were of birds and flowers.
Famous American author, Mark Twain was into scrapbbooks! He invented scrapbook pages that had pre-adhesive pages for mounting pictures. This was one of Mark Twains most popular books sold.
In 1980, modern scrapbooking was made popular when Marielen Christensen presented over 50 volumes of her family memory books at the World Conference on Records in Utah, USA. It generated so much interest that the Christensen family opened a store called Keeping Memories Alive, that is still in business in Utah.
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We have discovered a great website that features a whole bunch of scrapbook items for literally pennies on the dollar! It is called "Scrapbook Clearance," and it contains discontinued and overstocked items from stores and manufacturers across the country. Whether it is custom colored papers, stickers, cropping blocks, stencils, die cut shapes, even Disney products, etc. you will find what you need.
There is even a cute "scrapbook" song that is sung by a little girl that is hilarious! You can hear it for free when you get to that site.
As mentioned on an earlier post, we averaged start up costs to scrapbook at around $75.00. With buying your start up materials and tools from Scrapbook Clearance, you can spend way less than that.
There is no excuse not to start scrapbooking now!
Martha Stewart has partnered with EK Success to release a line of scrapbooking products. She finally "gets it." She knows that scrapbooking is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the USA, possibly in other parts of the world as well. She has tapped into the this craze by working with EK Success, who is a very large and successful company specializing in crafts. It appears to be a perfect between these two business titans because it will certainly bring scrapbooking to the forefront of people’s attention.
Martha Stewart will start out in specializing in scrapbooks for baby and wedding themes, since there has been a baby boom as of late and with many people getting married. Although her presentation will be geared towards the beginner with an upscale twist. This should be a great addition to present in her magazines, TV shows and other signature media outlets she owns.
Stay tuned for segments on her TV show on scrapbooking.
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There are literally thousands of resources online for the scrapper, whether beginner or experienced. One great link to go to is at: http://www.scrapbookpageideas.com/
For those of you who are very "right brained" creative, you will not have any problems coming up with many different ideas for your pages and themes. However, the best way to get your "juices" flowing is to see what others have done with their scrapbooks.
Other very good resources for other scrapbooking ideas can be found below:
http://www.shelleysscrapbooklayouts.com/
http://www.allscrapbookingideas.com/scrapbooking-ideas.html
http://www.michaels.com/art/online/projectList?channelid=8
http://genealogy.about.com/od/heritage_scrapbooking/
http://www.simplescrapbooksmag.com/inspiration/index.ihtml
These are just several of hundreds of resources online that can help give you ideas when starting out on your next scrapbook. If you have any great resources with helping you "jumpstart" your perfect idea or theme, please post it in our comments here.
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