The ScrapBlog

Scrapbooking is not just for your photos! You can use scrapbooking techniques for so many different projects. I’d like to give you some ideas.

Looking for that special and personal greeting card that you can’t seem to find at the store? Well, get out your scrapbooking stuff and make your own card. If you can scrapbook, then you can make your own cards too. Doesn’t every scrapbooker do that? I sure do. You can save a lot of money. Use your scraps and embellishments that you can’t seem to find a place for in your layouts. It’s so easy and fun.

Create a gift bag to match your fabulous card with scrapbooking materials. You can use wide sturdy ribbon as handles, a little sewing and sturdy cardstock for the bag part. Cover it in patterned paper and add embellishments (i.e. flowers) to make it pretty and add to the sturdiness. Sew on a pocket on the outside and glue everything with modge podge or something similar that will hold and viola! you have a wonderful gift bag that will be special to the lucky person.

Handmade gifts are just wonderful keepsakes. There are plastic purses or cigar boxes you can buy and you can dress them up in an artistic manner. Add patterned paper and embellishments and use modge podge to make sure it all sticks. These make really wonderful gifts.

Take a regular spiral notebook and cover it with everything that is special to you. You will be sure to jot down and look at your notes, because you will not want to take your eyes off of the art you’ve created!

Make a “Welcome to Our HOME” collage and place it in a shadow box in your hallway. Your guests will love it and you can be proud of your creativity. You can also make your own keyholder with hooks and all. Or just take a plain frame and spruce it up with some paint and embellishments to make it look special. That can also be used a gift.

Another great idea I saw recently was an oval shaped wooden box with a matching lid. When you add your patternd paper, some ribbon and metal, it makes a lovely jewelry box for yourself or as a gift. Use the modge podge again, to make it stick. This is very important since you don’t want it falling apart.

Use those old wine bottle gift tubes to create your own beautiful gift tube for someone else! If you look around your house, you just might find things you can “dress up”. A candy jar, a coffee can, an old pencil cup, a magazine holder, an address book. You name it! Anything is possible. Just use your imagination and let your creativity run wild!

Throughout the year we have both religious holidays and also secular holidays. I remember as a kid our family always spent the fourth of July with some friends of my parents. I have very fond memories of this family and actually remember their home and some of the various years we spent with them.

Depending on how many photos you take, you can either create a few small 6×6 albums, one for each holiday, or you can create one large 12×12 album and call it “Holiday’s of (fill in year)”.

I have found many stickers, diecuts and even pre-made kits for every holiday. I love to add these items to my holiday scrapbooks. I also love to color theme holiday books, such as red, white and blue for the fourth of July, or orange and brown for both Thanksgiving and Halloween.

If you buy invitations or receive an invitation to a holiday get together, save the invitation for your scrapbook.

I also love to put recipes into the holiday albums. Many families have family recipes they serve only for specific holidays. Capture those in your scrapbook pages and share them for generations to come.

Of course, people make the celebration. Take plenty of photos of the people attending the celebration. Take both group shots and also individual shots. Take photos of the buffet table before everyone eats.

If the holiday is a gift giving holiday, or gift giving celebration, save a little bit of the wrapping paper and ribbon to add to your scrapbook.

Today, preserving memories is as simple as attaching photos and memorabilia to a scrapbook page.

Often when we take vacations, we spend several months planning where to go, where to stay, and making all of the necessary arrangements to make the vacation enjoyable for all. When we get back, we have rolls of film that eventually get developed and then stuffed in a drawer. When we next pull them out, we’ve forgotten the reason for taking half of the pictures and much of the meaning of the photos has been lost.

Here are some suggestions to help in creating your vacation scrapbook:

Keep all maps from the trip.

Take a small notebook with you and write down a little bit of the data about the photos you are taking. There is a reason you are looking at something. There is a reason you are snapping the photo. Take a moment and jot down a few sentences that will trigger your memory once you return home.

Grab a few postcards from the place(s) you are visiting. This will add to your scrapbook and also help you remember where you’ve been and what you saw.

If you have children, consider giving them disposable cameras that they can use while on vacation. They may see things that you don’t and their photos will make a great addition to your vacation scrapbook.

If you will be in one town for a few days, consider developing some of your photos at a one hour photo processing business. As you look at your freshly taken photos add anything into your journal that you’ll want to put into your scrapbook.

If you visit museums, zoos or any other establishment, save your ticket stubs. Pick up any brochures of the establishment you are visiting.

While you are gone, will you be visiting any relatives? In addition to taking photos bring a list of questions you want to ask these relatives to put into both your family history scrapbook and also your vacation scrapbook.

Consider visiting the visitor’s center in the city or cities you are visiting and pick up information about the city that can be included in your scrapbook.

If you will be gone for a long period of time, consider bringing some basic scrapbook supplies with you and put together some pages while still on the trip. With one hour photo developing and basic supplies, you can return home with some pages already complete.

Vacation scrapbooks bring back wonderful memories. Enjoy your trip!! Bon Voyage!!

My daughter had some incredible elementary school teachers. Each of them took photos of her throughout the year. With those photos I was able to create a school days scrapbook for her.

My other daughter did not have these photos as a base and so we started from scratch. I had saved all of her school photos grades K-12th. We created a cover page for each grade using one of her school photos.

Some grades we had photos of her teachers, other grades we did not. For the grades where we did not have photos of the teachers we either hand wrote or typed the teachers name and added the name to the scrapbook page. Even where we did have a photo of the teacher, we also added the name of the teacher.

As we went through our own personal photos, we found photos of school friends through out the years and added those to the appropriate school year.

When my daughter was in high school, she collected wallet sized photos from many of her friends. We were able to create many pages of her friend’s photos. One suggestion is to write the name of the person with the photo. Over time, we do tend to forget the names of those we attended school with. Have you as an adult, been to a 10 or 20 year high school reunion and recognized a face, but couldn’t put a name to it? So, add the names of the friends as you build the pages.

If you live in the same town as the school buildings, go and take a few photos of the school to add to the scrapbook.

We have moved many times over the years. Take photos of the houses associated with the various school years.

With small plastic sheet protectors, you can add items like report cards. We also have saved all awards both girls have received. All of these make wonderful additions to a school days scrapbook.

We have found many scrapbook kits, scrapbook stickers and scrapbook paper with a school days theme. These can be fun to add to your scrapbook.

Did you child write notes to the tooth fairy? I saved these to give to my kids when they were older. Consider adding these, again in a sheet protector to the school days scrapbook.

Your imagination is the only limitation to building a school days scrapbook that your child will cherish for years to come.

Are you in need of a bit of a “pick me up” when it comes to scrapbooking ideas? If so, take heart. There are many ways to incorporate traditional methods in new ways as well as ideas to branch out and try something new. The following ideas can help spark new ideas or point you in a new direction.

Quote It - You love the photos, but feel intimidated by the idea of adding journal entries to help you remember. One way to get around this is to use different entry techniques. For example, when scrapbooking a favorite event, consider using quotes from the event rather than simply stating what it was. A tour guide may have provided an unusual piece of history, or a child may have piped up with something funny. Making note of the things people say adds a unique dimension to your memories.

Scrapbooks of Unusual Size - Consider going smaller or larger than the traditional scrapbook. You can make your own minis or find plenty to choose from that are specifically designed for this purpose. Oversized scrapbooks can be a fun alternative as well, creating an air of fine art that deserves special recognition. You can make your own, using specialty papers and card stocks, and include as many or as few pages as you’re inclined.

Multicultural - Tired of the same old themes? Look to other cultures and works of art for inspiration. This obviously works well for travel and vacation scrapbooks, but you can gather ideas from these sources as well. Visit the library and browse art and travel books highlighting culture from around the globe. You’ll likely walk away with some good ideas.

Turn to Nature - Remember pressing flowers or making an imprint of leaves? These same themes can easily be incorporated into your scrapbooking projects. Making an imprint is quick and easy, but you can also press flowers or use leaves with a quick and easy self-stick laminating kit. It’s quick, easy, and adds some outdoor flair to your project.

Many people say, sure I’d love to scrapbook if I had nothing to do all day but cut and paste things. The real waste of time is not creating a scrapbook, but rather taking pictures, dropping them off at the store, picking them up, putting them in a box, and then wasting numerous hours trying to find a specific picture months later. Why take pictures if you’re just going to coral them in the closet like cattle? Making a scrapbook is about preserving memories for future generations. With scrapbooks, people organize their pictures, souvenirs and mementos into themes and create mini-histories using safe materials to ensure the photos will last ages. Simply put, scrapbooks are more than fun times with friends, or that fulfilling feeling you get when you create something. Scrapbooks are is also an investment in your family and future generations.

Find Time to Scrapbook
Alright, so how do you make time? Don’t think you have to belt out a scrapbook in one sitting. Most people are short on time with a tall list of things to do, so their goal is to create a page here and there which will eventually complete a themed album. Like with anything else you want to accomplish, you must schedule time and break your project into little steps. You can sort through photos while the kids nap or are out to play. Think up themes and come up with design ideas when you are out and about and bombarded with color combinations. If you have a small child or children you may find it difficult to schedule time to breathe, let alone scrapbook, but there is always time, even if all you can spare is fifteen minutes here or ten minutes there, at least you can get a little done, like sorting pictures or placing one on a page. Once you have experienced the rewards from scrapbooks, you’ll find that time for it magically appears.

Scraping Lingo

 Acid-Free
When wood goes through the process which turns it into paper, acid is added to assist in breaking down the wood. Once acid is added to a process, it doesn’t just stop working, you must neutralize it. So, the acid in paper, still alive and kicking, is a real enemy to photographs as it will destroy your pictures in time, which is why acid-free is such a common term in this craft. Everything from paper to glue must be acid-free. A “buffered” paper is one where additives, such as calcium carbonate are used to neutralize the acid.

 pH
This is a term you’re probably familiar with if you make homemade soap or maintain a pool. pH refers to the level of acidity in whatever the item is you’re testing, in this case paper. The scale ranges from 0-14 with 0-6 being too acidic, 7 neutral, and anything above 7 has too much alkalinity. To give you some examples, battery acid has a pH of 1, milk measure at 7 and ammonia has a pH of 12. Because scrapbook pros want to stay away from acid in their paper, anything with a pH of 7 or above is good.

 Lignin
Sounds like a tasty berry, but it’s not. Lignin naturally occurs in trees as they grow, but when a tree is processed into paper, lignin is responsible for turning it yellow and brittle with time.

 Photo-Safe
Photo-safe is a term you’ll often see on packing or in instructions. This means that the embellishment, paper or glue will not harm your photographs. This is often another term for acid-free, but either way, make sure everything you use from paper to pencils, had one term or the other on the package.

 Sheet Protectors
Finished scrapbook pages are often slipped into sheet protections before being inserted into the final album. Like all items you use, make sure that they are acid-free. The Polypropylene variety sold in grocery and office supply stores is not acid-free. There are also smaller protectors for smaller items you want to add to the scrapbook, but don’t want to put adhesive on. With these items, such as a very old letter, you would put it into the protector and then adhere that to the page.

 Cardstock
Cardstock is a heavier, studier paper making it an ideal backing for pages with heavier embellishments or more photographs.

 Adhesives
These are used to attach photos and other items to your scrapbook pages. There are many types of adhesives used in scrapbooks for the various items used in an album (remember, this country was founded on freedom of choice, so beginners, don’t roll your eyes with all the choices with you.) Remember to make sure that the adhesive is acid-free and be sure note if you’re using permanent or nonpermanent glue. Once you put it in place, it is there to stay with permanent glue, while with nonpermanent glue you will be able to pick up the item and attach it elsewhere. Other types of adhesives include tape, double-sided tape, liquid, and stick glue, and spray adhesive. Spray adhesive is excellent for gluing larger items. Because you spray it on, there is a thin even layer of adhesive, so when you place the item in the scrapbook you do not have hills and valleys of glue underneath. You can also use adhesive tabs which come in a variety of shapes large and small.

 Photo corners
Photo corners are another type of adhesive, but unlike the others photos corners are placed in front of your picture and used as a frame to keep the picture in place. They come in many different sizes and colors.

 Journaling Journaling refers to captions below photographs that give information about the picture. This is the heart and soul of the scrapbook as it gives us the story behind the picture. Journaling can be a few words, a paragraph, even an entire column and it can be done by hand, computer or any other method that allows you to give the details.

 Embellishment
An embellishment is a decoration or design added to any part of the album with the purpose of adding character, color and style. These are things you add to reinforce the theme and tell the story. Stickers are a popular embellishment, but you can add anything from dried flowers to ribbon. Embellishment and creative page design are what make a scrapbook different from a photo album.

 Punch
This is not a fruity drink, but rather a hole punch gone wild. The hand held shape makes come in an array of whacky shapes and patterns that you can “punch” onto your pages or if you’re really creative, your pictures.

 Die Cuts
Die cuts are like paper punches on steroids. They are metal dies (molds) use to cut sheets of paper into specific shapes.

 Straight-edged scissors
Straight-edged scissors are your basic household variety scissors.

 Decorative-edged scissors
Inside of the straight shears of standard scissors, decorative edged scissors are usually made of plastic with ridged or scalloped cutting edges to give pages and pictures and design, rather than a straight line.

 Exacto-Knife
If you’re not familiar with the term, you’re probably familiar with the sight. Exacto-knives are metal pen-like shapes with a tiny, very sharp razor blade on the edge that is inserted on an angle giving it knife-like abilities that are razor sharp and precise. It is a very precise and smaller version of a utility knife. With this type of knife and it even acts as tweezers in that you can pick up thicker pieces of paper with the tip, which is helpful especially after adhesive is added.

 Craft Knife
Crave knives are used to make clean, straight lines. Another cutting device is the rotary cutter, which is shaped like a pizza cutter, only much smaller. This is excellent for working around corners. Any job or project that deals in design (graphic design, magazine layout, and advertising) relies on precision in images and since scrapbooks are a form of communication through pictures and images, you too will rely heavily on your cutting devices.

 Templates
Templates can mean a few things, but all relating to acting as a guide to create a shape on the paper. A page template is a guide giving you page settings to create a page size. For example, if you are making a 5×7 scrapbook you could use a template that would allow you to more than one page from a standard sheet of paper. Templates are also placed over photos, that when cut according to template will give your photograph a new shape (like a heart.) Templates are also used to embellish pages.

 Gel Pens
Gel pens are not going to bleed on you. They are so good at this, that when gel pens are used in day-to-day life, such as check writing, it is the only ink that a criminal cannot manipulate (i.e. transferring your signature from one document to another.) Their bleed-free super powers make them an ideal choice for journaling.

 Colored Pencils
As with any art, there are many uses for the colored pencils from drawing decorations to creating colorful borders or text.

 Cropping
I’ve been cropping for over a decade, yet I still think of a stalk of corn when I hear this term. You have a picture in front of you. Perhaps it is of your dog, but you took it at a park and there is a garbage can on one side you’d like to eliminate from the picture and perhaps there is too much space at the top of photo. With cropping you can move the parameter of your photo in, up or down, to get rid of “undesirables” such as space and garage. This will not resize your photo. If you started with a 5×7, you will still have a 5×7 after cropping, but the remaining objects will appear bigger and closer up.

 Digital Scrapbooks
When your scrapbook is designed and store online you have a digital scrapbook. These are gaining in popularity. These can be created in PhotoShop or even Word documents, PDF files, or even Web pages.

Christina Bultinck is a published writer/author with tens years experience. She writes original and affordable content for website owners and businesses at BuyContentOnline.com

Scrapbooking tools are essential to creating a successful scrapbook. The supplies for scrapbooking are what make your scrapbook come to life. What most people don’t know is that there are many ways that you can use ordinary scrapbook supplies and do something extraordinary with them. I’m going to walk you through a few tips and tricks of scrapbooking, and teach you techniques to come up with your own scrapbooking ideas!

Take a rubber stamp, a scrapbooking material that every scrapbooker should have. You can use this scrapbooking tool to stamp images beside your photographs, or you can take it a step further by stamping a collage on solid-colored scrapbook paper to create a custom scrapbook page layout background. Also, you can color in your stamped images to bring them to life and make them pop out more on your scrapbook page.

Another scrapbooking tip to make use of your supplies for scrapbook is using scrapbook templates creatively. It’s easy to become stumped while using this scrapbooking material. You can decorate around a photo, or even the border of a page. These scrapbook supplies can be used to draw an area the put your scrapbook journaling in, also. One other useful technique for scrapbook templates is for making a page header. There are many attractive letter templates that make for beautiful scrapbook page headers, or even write words around the border of a page with the letter template.

You can do creative things with a pair of scissors, also. Although decorative scissors with different patterns on the edge are nice, they are not a necessity of scrapbooking supplies. Cut mats for photos with creative borders, or use them with templates to cut out letters and other things to give a 3D effect on your scrapbook page.

Those are just a few of the many ways you can use scrapbook supplies. Be creative with your scrapbooking tools. To come up with original ways to use your supplies for scrapbooking, simply look at what others have done. Take ideas that you like, and alter them to fit your scrapbook. Use scrapbook tools in any way that you like. There are no rules.

Test your ideas out on scrap paper before you actually put it into your scrapbook. This way, you can see if you really like the idea or not, and tweak the design a bit to your liking. If you come up with something that you like, but don’t know when you will use it, write it down for later reference.

Remember that there are no rules to using your scrapbooking materials and scrapbook supplies. Be creative!

When it comes to journaling in our scrapbooks, many of us look for alternatives to old fashioned pen and paper. I know I’ve used stickers and diecuts to help write my message. I find just pen and paper sometimes are not quite what I want.

Next time you want to journal, but don’t wish to handwrite, consider using your computer and a word processor.

There are so many ways to use a word processor to manipulate text. The very basics are to open a word document, type your text and then alter the font and sizing to your liking. You can also shade and underline words in a simple text document.

Both Microsoft Word and Word Perfect have a feature called “word art”. In Microsoft Word, go to the “insert” column in the top menu. Click on “picture” and then “word art”. In Word Perfect, again go to the “insert” column in the top menu, then click on “graphics” and “text art”.

Both programs allow you take words and make them into an arc, a circle etc. Have fun and play around with the many features of both programs and look at all of the various ways your text can appear.

In Microsoft Word, once you type the text, you can click on it and you’ll get another menu box along side the text. If you click on the “abc”, which is “word art shape” you can choose to have your text any shape you’d like. In Word Perfect, the shape is available on the first text screen.

There are just so many options to choose from. You can create page titles for your pages. You can journal about a particular photo. You can make a cover page for the entire album.

With these text features, you truly can match text size, shape and color to the rest of your layout, the overall theme of a page, or an entire album.

After you’ve created your text, print it out first on a white sheet of paper to see exactly how it will look and if it needs to be moved or changed. Once you are happy with the layout of the text, insert a sheet of acid free paper into your printer and print your text. Then cut out the text according to how you want the text on your scrapbook page. You can also print the text directly on your background sheet, eliminating the need to cut the text.

You can also create outline text, make it large and then color it in, according to the color theme of your page. Truly the ideas are limitless as to what you can do with computer generated text.

Chalking adds highlights, dimension, color, and character to your scrapbook pages and embellishments. It is long lasting and comes in dozens of colors. You can choose from single and multi-packs or chalk that comes in pencil form or wafers. Chalking is versatile, inexpensive, easy, fun and sometimes messy medium to give your album a professional look. Acid free chalk can be used on die cuts, stamping, cardstock, patterned papers and vellum.

There are no specific tools to apply chalk. You can use the applicator that comes with the set or you can use Q-Tips, cotton balls, make-up brushes or even your fingers. Experiment with what works best for you. A good thing to have is a chalk eraser to fix your mistakes. This should be done as soon as possible because chalk sets quickly. Wipe off excess dust by turning your page over on a paper towel and rubbing the back of your page. It is best if you have a specific area when working with chalk. It can be dusty and very hard to clean up if dropped on flooring such as carpet.

You can use chalk to fill in or outline a stencil template or create just the right color for photo mats, embellishments and ribbons. Chalking also adds soft colors and shading to borders and backgrounds. When chalking large areas it is a good idea to prep the area by choosing a color chalk that closely matches the color of your paper. This way there are no obvious lines and your colors will blend easily. Prepping will lighten the detail layers so you might want to use darker colors than the ones you want. Add finishing touches with pen work. Experiment and have fun!

One of the biggest reasons many of us don’t touch our scrapbooks for months is that supplies and photos are scattered all over the place. Having to hunt for a book of stickers or a special pair of scissors takes all the fun out of creating a new page for your scrapbook. Here are few ideas how you can create a scrapbooking organization process.

Group your supplies by theme. Create one general supplies container that has all your essential tools and materials in it. Then sort your stickers, special papers and accessories by category. Depending on what scrapbooks you are working on, you could organize them by particular scrapbook (i.e. wedding scrapbook, child’s scrapbook etc.), or you could organize them by season (Christmas stuff, summer themed supplies etc.) or overall theme or color scheme.

Get the pictures you are planning to use as well. I usually sort them into separate envelopes, or small boxes for each scrapbook I am working on. If you are organizing your supplies by scrapbook, it’s a good idea to keep your picture box for that scrapbook with the rest of your supplies.

I like to use clear plastic bins to store my scrapbooking supplies, so I can easily see what’s inside. Clear, descriptive labels on the outside of the box help as well. Store the boxes of supplies for scrapbooks you are currently working on close to the area where you like to scrapbook. This will keep you from running back and forth for supplies.

Store any supplies for books that you are not currently working on, or any extra supplies you may have purchased on sale, or for future projects in a dark, dry place. A closet in a spare room makes a great storage place. If you are considering storing your scrapbooking supplies in the basement or attic, make sure the area is not damp and doesn’t get too hot or cold. You don’t want to unpack your supplies in a few months and find out that everything has been ruined by mold, bleached from being exposed to light, or warped from heat.

Take a little time to set-up a scrapbooking organization process with your scrapbooking supplies. You’ll find you will enjoy scrapbooking even more when everything you need is right at your fingertips. Go out and get some boxes or plastic bins to store your supplies and start organizing your supplies this week.