1. Use any and all materials you have on hand in the house first
2. Buy seasonal embellishments during “off time” of the season you are working in. (i.e. buy Christmas embellishments a week or more after Christmas, etc.)
3. Seek page layout ideas from the internet, as opposed to buying high priced scrapbook ideas books at the book store.
4. Swap tools and embellishments with your friends and family who are not using them now.
5. Only buy your supplies when they are on sale.
6. Don’t overstock yourself on embellishments in advance…you may be building up inventory that you may never use again.
7. Build a “scraps” collection of unused or “extra” scraps of paper of unused materials. You can always make use of these scraps later.
8. If you use stamps, contact your scrapbooking “buddies” and trade use of your stamps for theirs and swap them back.
9. When getting photos reproduced, don’t over order duplicates thinking you are going to use all of them. Plan in advance and only order the photo prints you are going to actually use.
10. If you are going to use a lot of a particular embellishment, get your scrapbooking buddies to chip in money to buy them and share the embellishments with them.
11. Contact your scrapbook buddies and ask them if they have any embellishments or materials that they don’t intend on using and ask for them.
12. Always be on the lookout for discount coupons at art stores like Michaels. You never know when you will have need for them in a moment’s notice!
13. “Shop” the internet for scrapbook supplies….quite often they are cheaper than you could buy at a local store.

These are just some ideas to make a scrapbook on the cheap. There is always creative ways to make scrapbooks. The main expense on any scrapbook project is going to be the binder. Don’t sacrifice on that….you want the binder to last for a very long time. As always, use acid free paper for mounting photos.

You can actually download for free, the finished recipe scrapbook at http://www.scrapsofmind.com/2008/05/28/free-scrapbooking-recipe-book-2/ 

Karen managed to give such a large scrapbook to all of us for free! The download is fairly big, over 3 MB. So make sure you have enough space in your hard drive for this! Enjoy.

Often, floral scrapbooks are made for females so this flower shape will be perfect for them! It is fun to make repeated floral shapes. There are so many ways to display them. They could be piled on top of each other and make a very raised effect. You could make one flat floral layer and fill the page to make a textured page. You could also overlap the flowers to make a virtual "flower bed!"

So when making a floral scrapbook page, go wild and make up as many different patterns as you can!

To start out, seniors have so much life experience that it is no problem trying to find topics of interest or the people in their lives that they can dedicate a scrapbook too.

The only thing that may be a challenge is the budget. We went over that with an earlier post regarding scrapbooking on a budget. There are plenty of knick knacks around the house and of course tons of pictures in boxes and and everywhere at relatives houses and such. The first thing a senior should do is pick an obvious topic for the scrapbook. Do you know what we are thinking at the top of the list?? Grandkids!!

There is no end to how many pictures there have been taken with the grandkids, especially from the time of birth at the hospital. What senior does not have pictures of the grand children from at least their first several birthdays. So, gather the pictures first. Next, comes the theme of the scrapbook. It could be the "growing years" or the "next astronaut." or the "future rock star." If these young ones show any aptitude for any musical talents or dancing, or "brains" answering each city name in Africa, the themes are endless.

Once set on a theme, you should get embellishments and other scraps to complement the theme. Going to a scrapbook store near you could give you so many more ideas of the page design, embellishments, and other material items. I would suggest not to plan for a very large scrapbook because it could get so bulky that it will be uncomfortable to lug it around.

If a senior has never done a scrapbook before, it is wise to buy a beginning book in scrapbooking. Make sure it has a lot of pictures. The less words the better! We want the seniors to have fun while learning.

Now, although there  are advantages to this because you dealing with just a computer interface to make all your pages, there is a small piece of real sentimental feeling that is missing when you sit down at your kitchen table and, with the help of your kids or relatives, get "down and dirty" on real artifacts to paste into a real binder. Call me sentimental, but you can never replace a real binder and scrapbook that you can hold in your hands versus something that you can email and save to disk!

Some computerized scrapbooks now can add video and audio to parts of the digital pages which is a nice touch. Whichever way you want to go, make sure you keep the same intensity of creativity when making layouts. Keep your themes consistent and most of all, make sure the person or people you are dedicating the scrapbook gets a good vibe and can feel the emotion that went into making the scrapbook! You cannot hide the care and love that went into any scrapbook! Scrapbooks are truly a labor of love!!

It starts out with journaling. Journaling on a layout provides information and details about the event or person in the layout. It reveals a feeling for an event or person that is featured on that page. Journaling can be limited to one page or extensively cover an entire mini-album.

Story-oriented journaling can be limited to one page, but it can also cover an entire album. A storybook album is an entire album centered around one event told in a story format.

Choose a story. Any good book starts with an idea. A good story would involve some conflict and some final resolution to the conflict. The more conflict, the better the story. Consider situations in your life that had to be overcome or an event that was filled with conflict. When writing my storybook "The Misadventure," I remembered a time when we were hiking and a few unusual things happened including getting lost on the trail. These conflicts could create tension and a good resolution for my story.
 

Write the story. A storybook is different from other journaling in the way the story is told and in the words it uses. Often a story is told from the third person point of view, and often through the eyes of the main character. Like a fictional book, it will depend on a central character and the actions and thoughts of that character. Another similarity to fiction is the use of words. Active description and details are used. Not everything is necessarily really as it happened. While the event may be real, the dialogue may be invented or something may be described differently than reality. A storybook mixes the real with a bit of fiction to make a story. It could be entirely fictional as well.

Merge  the story and illustrations or pictures. Now it’s time to get the story and the illustrations or photographs together. Just like any other scrapbook page, you assemble them in your favorite scrapbook style.