Scrapbooking - its fun!
Scrapbooking is a hobby that has been growing in popularity. This is a craft that lets you combine photographs, mementos, journaling, and a variety of decorative embellishments in a scrapbook to celebrate meaningful people, places, things, and events in your life. This is something that you will admire in years to come as it will make you smile while looking at your past adventures. Do you have a scrap book? If no make one today, we have some wonderful tips to decorate your own scrapbook.
Steps to create your own scrapbook:
Page theme: First of all you need to
look for some patterned and solid paper that go well with your photos and with
your scrapbook theme. For each page, always highlight only one photograph as
the focal point. You can use a couple of other photos on the same page, but
they should be cropped smaller and only be used to complement the main photo.
- Matte the Photos: Matte your photos on solid paper before laying them down on a patterned background. The main photo should be double matted to give it extra prominence on the page.
- Lay Out the main Page: Play with your imagination and add a chunk of patterned paper at the top of the page and a larger strip along the bottom is an easy way to lay out the page, and it will give you an obvious place to put your photographs. Sketch out the page before assembling it in the book. Then you can crop your photos and cut out the shapes that you will need on the page.
- Add text and titles: If you are adding any journaling or titles to your page, it is a good idea to write these on card stock, which you can then paste onto the page. That way, if you make a mistake, you have not ruined the whole page. To give a better look you can type your text up on the computer, and then print it out in a nice font on some heavy cardstock.
- Final touch of the scrapbook: Once you are done with the creation of all of your pieces, lay them down on the scrapbook page to make sure that they look right. If you are using stickers, they will look better anchored in boxes or on strips of paper instead of just scattered around the page. When you are happy with the designing, begin gluing the photos and the decorations to the page.
Hence your beautiful creative scrapbook is ready to store your memories.
Some important things you can add in your scrapbook:
- You must describe the picture in detail so that the people who were not the part of the activity can relive your memories and stories for themselves when they read them in future.
- Name the people appearing in the photo, and describe who took it and who else was present.
- Also state the purpose of the photograph.
- You should state where the event your photo illustrates was and it is always good to give some background information.
- Remember to tell to the reader when the photograph was taken and add the specific date including the year if possible.
Ask yourself, "What would I want to tell future generations about the photos on my page?" and this should be more than enough to help you write down your stories.
Some interesting topics on which you can create scrapbook:
- Document the Birth of a Baby
- Document Family History
- Document your birthday
- Document your wedding anniversary
- Document Your Personal Journey
- Document a religious ceremony
- Document a wedding.
Elements of a Scrapbook:
Album: Scrapbooking albums come in a variety of sizes, from the standard 12"
× 12" and 8 1/2" × 11" to other variations, such as 6" ×
6" and 18" × 18". Some albums are expandable
and come with plastic page protectors; others are fixed
and hold a set amount of pages.
Photographs: Photographs are the heart of a scrapbook.
Mementos: Concert tickets, store receipts, and wedding invitations are all examples of mementos-souvenirs that add visual interest to a scrapbook page. Make a habit of saving special odds and ends from events.
Embellishments: Embellishments are decorative items, such as paper flowers, metal brads, stickers, die cuts, and acrylics.
Web Scrapbook: With growing technology, you can also place your scrapbook on web and share with your friends. We are surrounded by email, the internet, computers, digital cameras, iPods, etc. Technology is all around us. So, naturally, the next step in scrapbooking is digital scrapbooking! Digital Scrapbooking is just another form of capturing & preserving your memories. You use a graphics or photo editing program to design your pages.
(Sources: wisegeek.com, quamut.com, video.about.com, ezinearticles.com, twopeasinabucket.com)
