The perfect scrapbook to do for a family is a memoir scrapbook for grand-parents. What is great about this topic is that there no shortage of pictures. Grand parents have so much rich history to tell with their pictures from when they were children to their teens and adolescents and finally young adults. They went through the war time, saw many of the modern appliances develop, the invention of the automobile, the first man on the moon, and so on. It is literally a "time machine" of memories!
Care must be given to the older pictures which may have faded over time. You want to get those old pictures behind acid free picture protectors as soon as possible. You may even find it a pleasant experience when interviewing your grand parent on what happened to them during each particular picture. They may even go off on a tangent and tell you about other life awakening stories that you can include in the journaling part of the scrapbook.
For embellishments you may find some heirloom objects that they are willing to part with so you can inlcude them directly into a scrapbook page. Old love letters, badges, certificates, even baby shoes! Somehow, you can find a way to attach them to the scrapbook.
Make sure, when doing the journaling, that you are putting everything chronological order. The most compelling memoirs are the one’s that can have consistency from the beginning of one’s life to the present.
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With Valentine’s Day out of the way, we have to look towards March and St. Patrick’s Day. There is a wide variety of embellishments that you can buy from any craft store in your local area. Some of the embellishments that are available arel; green clover leafs, green hats, leprechaun silhouettes, lucky charms, shallelies, dancing elves, banyon trees, pot of gold, rainbows, and so much more.
You can make a short binder full of pictures, embellishments and journaling. It is just like the Valentine’s Day scrapbook where, it is obvious that there will not be many pictures inside. Now some creative scrapbookers are buying royalty free pictures from sites like istockphoto.com or Getty Photos, etc. and either printing them out or getting hard copy prints from their local camera store.
For journaling, there is a site, http://www.quotegarden.com/st-patricks-day.html that has many St. Patrick’s Day quotes that you can use. As a matter of fact, this site, quote garden is a great place to bookmark for any type of themed scrapbook.
May the luck of the Irish be with you!
Having trouble finding ways to say "I love you" to your special someone in the Valentine scrapbook? There is a website called Love Quotes that has over 100 most popular and obscure sayings about romance. I would expect that most of you will have the least amount of pictures and plenty of space for embellishments, frames, binder styles and journaling. You may have to bulk up on embellishments and journalling of special sayings…many different ways of saying how much you love the object of your love. We posted a short video below for ideas on how to make your Valentine themed scrapbook when you are short on "love" photos.
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As we end January, Valentines Day is just around the corner. As mentioned in a previous post, any avid scrapper should keep track of all holidays and national celebrations for ideas on making your next scrapbook.
Which comes to the point of time management. Many of our email tells us that scrappers often do not have enough time in the day or week to keep building their scrapbooks. A good way of making sure you are getting your scrapbooks done in time is to make sure you have a scratch pad on a table in a set place and a daytimer with you at all times that you keep track of "to do’s" That way, you can make an entry in the scratch pad and the daytimer of when you need the scrapbook done by. In either case, make sure you start a system in which reminds you of the deadline in which to finish your scrapbook. This is true especially for time sensitive themes such as birthdays, anniversaries and holidays.
For Valentines Day, now is the time to go to your hobbie or craft store because they probably now carry Valentine themed embellishments. Do be late! You need to start looking late in January or early February before all the products and embellishments are all looked over the the best of the best items are taken!
Obvious embellishments are: foil valentine shapes, red colored yarn, small valentine shaped candy, cutting heart shaped silouttes from construction paper, red buttons, lace, call out "clouds" that you can fill in "love you" messages in it, small valentine shaped sprinkles, and so on. A great idea is to cut out a medium sized heart shape out of construction paper and insert a picture of you and your loved one behind it so the heart shape becomes a "frame" around it.
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, start your scrapbook now!
There is a great scrapbook site that you should take a look at if you have been scrapbooking for any while. It is called creatingkeepsakes.com
It is a very polished site that has many features. Some of the great things it has on it are; community bulletin board to share with other scrappers, featured stories of other scrapbookers, blogs of other scrappers, access to online scrapbook magazines, scrapbook store for your materials and supplies needs, they even provide a workspace for your photos and layouts.
The only catch is that you have to register as a member (free) with them in order to access the main and prefered features of the site. We have many favorable recommendations to this site.
Try this site out and give us your honest opinion of their service.
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As we approach a new year (2009) there is much to do in thinking about your next scrapbook. If you have not finished your holiday scrapbook or any other scrapbook that you were working on for someone else, you should either putting them aside for now or complete it soon. As with the new year, ideas for a new scrapbook abound. You may even be planning a "2009" scrapbook theme or an upcoming birthday of a grand child or a "valentines" scrapbook as a gift to your loved one.
Here are more ideas for new scrapbooks you might consider to start planning for:
- Upcoming wedding
- Welcome home military
- New Year
- Valentines
- Spring Break
- Mother’s Day
- Wedding Anniversary
- Graduation
- New Baby
- Birthday
- Family Reunion
You can see that there are many ideas you can plan for now. Time goes by so quickly so you need to get a head start on purchasing materials, sorting out through photos, choosing a binder cover, selecting embellishments, and what journalling elements you will put into it.
Whatever theme you choose for the next scrapbook, get on it!
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For those of you that want the most classy scrapbook album, I recommend a leather bound cover with a built in custom three ring binder system. There is a company that makes high quality albums called www.Kolo.com
My favorite model is the "Leather Newport," which comes in two sizes, 11" x 14" and 12" x 12." They are not cheap, starting price is $60. But if you really need to make a "statement" and want nothing but the best, I recommend scrapbook albums from this company. I also like the unique design on this model where you display a picture in the center of the cover by sliding in a real photo there.
This company also makes guest books, presentation binders, photo boxes, and corporate gifts, to name a few.
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For those of you that need more ideas for making a Halloween scrapbook, we have an excellent idea. At this time of year (October) take a trip to your local party store. These are the stores that have imprinted balloons for birthdays, party napkins, holiday decorations, greeting cards, and tons of miniature toys. Well, you will find the aisle that has miniature toy packets. You will find that there are many 3-D items in the form of: small plastic halloween masks, witches broomsticks, miniature jack-o-lantern faces, orange colored Halloween stickers, etc.
The perfect plan for a Halloween scrapbook would be to, take lots of pictures of your children and family in full Halloween costumes. Buy a load of miniature Halloween themed toys from your local party store….which is going to be your embellishments. Then get a good sized binder/album and make sure you decorate the cover in orange and black. For pages, use alternating black and orange construction paper to mount the pictures. Now you see the unlimited possibilities with using the miniature Halloween toys throughout the scrapbook pages? Of course, your Halloween costume pictures will speak for themselves. If you have a pet, don’t forget to "costume" them up too!
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Here is a nice video of a scrapbooking technique using a masque pen. It goes well with rubber stamping. This video is presented by Scrapbookers Buzz.
Note: Please be patient, it will take some time to fully load in your browser. For dial up users, keep your browser on this site for at least three minutes before clicking "play" button.
Masque Pen Demo for Rubber Stamping & Scrapbooking from Scrapbookers Buzz, Inc. on Vimeo.
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An attractive technique for placing photographs into scrapbooks is the photograph mosaic. Mosaics stretch photographs into an artistic rendition of the original photograph. Maps can also be stretched in this way. This method might be employed to create a funky look for a friend scrapbook or as a background for someone who likes computers, GIS, or geography.
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