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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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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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!
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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A great strategy before you start a scrapbook is to sketch out the layout. This is often the most basic step for any scrapbooker. Pay attention to the theme you plan, gather your pictures, and on a legal pad, sketch out the placement of most of the items. Don’t worry, you can always change things later. The most important part is to get the feel for laying out things. When a beginner first starts out on scrapbooking, the largest fear is getting the sense of design. You see, designing the layout on a scrapbook is no different than a highly paid Madison Avenue art designer. You must know what comes natural in placement of items to make a pleasing arrangement.
1) Draw the rectangles or other shapes of where you want to place the photos on the legal pad.
2) Draw rough shapes of the decorative items or letters you want in and around the pictures.
3) Draw the outline of the pages and additional design patterns that you want around the whole page
A good example of a scrapbook planning sketch can be found here.
In the example shown on that link, the theme is a father and son theme.
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We are pleased to announced our first scrapbook expert interview featuring Grace from Arizona. She has over 5 years of scrapping experience and enjoys her hobby immensely. She is pretty knowledgeable now and has some tips and tricks to share with you.
If you liked this interview, feel free to make a comment here for your feedback. Enjoy!
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The next step in making a successful scrapbook is to find a clean table to work on. Two of the most popular places in your home to use as a workspace is the kitchen table or a handy folding table that you can open up in the dining room or basement. There are many people who have a "hobby" table, one where they make crafts, models, or just generally "fix" things.
Wherever you choose as your workplace, make sure you get a table covering for the whole table or at least a used old placemat to put on top of it as you are going to be working with glue, paint, and other chemicals when assembling your masterpiece. Also, make sure it has good ventilation. You don’t want to get caught up in some overpowering smells! The last thing is to make sure you have great lighting on top of the table. A desk lamp is also a good choice. There will be a time when you need to look closely at your project and have to carefully work with small detail work. The desk lamp sure comes in handy.
As mentioned in the last post on scrapbook material organizers, you can bring out these containers to the table where are going to work. Don’t forget your legal pad and pen too! With the table, scrapbook material containers, and legal pad, you are ready to go!
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