Scrapbook My Life

Summer is just around the corner! With kids home from school and warm weather calling, it’s often hard to find time to scrapbook. However, if you snap the following pictures, you can guarantee you’ll be in great shape to get caught up on your album when fall rolls around again.

• Dirt tracked into the house by little feet
• Having a BBQ with family and friends
• Creating works of art with sidewalk chalk
• Frisbees sailing through the air
• Kids blowing bubbles
• Fruity, frozen drinks with paper umbrellas
• A child soaring on a tree swing in the backyard
• Sleeping under the stars
• Serving fresh squeezed lemonade
• Riding bikes around the neighborhood
• Watching the sun rise on an early morning walk
• The car packed for the first family vacation of the season
• Wide brimmed hats and colorful sunglasses
• Climbing trees
• Watching movies at the drive in
• Screaming and giggling on a giant roller coaster
• Eating cotton candy
• Building sandcastles
• Applying sunscreen
• Children feasting on dripping popsicles
• Lying on your back, watching clouds drift through the air
• Spending the whole day in your swimsuit
• Slices of juicy watermelon

Since I’m trying to be a thrifty scrapbooker, I make an effort to use all of my supplies to their full advantage. For example, I keep scraps of cardstock and patterned paper filed by color in a special folder that I refer to whenever I’m at work. Here are some of my favorite techniques for working with these scraps:

• Punch out circles, squares, and other shapes from your paper, then arrange on a sheet of white cardstock for a customized background.
• Cut out flowers or other designs from your paper. Mount them on your layout with foam adhesive for an instant and very cheap embellishment.
• Make an envelope to use as a pocket for memorabilia on your page.
• Layer torn strips of coordinating papers on top of a photo mat for an artistic look.
• If you’re not wild about a particular pattern, flip it over and use the white side as a surface for journaling or rubber stamping.

Setting eyelets into your layout is a great way to relieve stress, but you may want to consider investing in a few brads if you’re sick of all that hammering! Brads are available in almost every color under the sun, including patterned and shaped options that work well for seasonal or themed layouts.

Brads are easy to use, even if you’re new to scrapbooking. Simply poke a hole in your page and bend the prongs on the brad pack. Making a slit with a craft knife first is a great idea, especially when going through more than one layer.

To keep brads from moving and having the clasp on the back shift into view or poke through the side of your page protector, place a photo split on top of the clasp to hold it in place. Just don’t forget to leave the backing on, so the back of your page won’t be sticky.

If you want to use brads on your layout but don’t want to put holes in your page, bend the tips back and forth until they snap off. (You shouldn’t need wire cutters for this.) Attach the brad to your page with a small glue dot.

Although photo corners were created as a way to attach a picture to your scrapbook layout without using a glue stick or some other form of permanent adhesive, they also work well as a subtle page embellishment. Here are a few ideas to consider:

• A date stamped on a strip of vellum provides a fun and functional photo corner.
• Fashion custom photo corners by stitching buttons to cardstock triangles.
• Create the illusion of photo corners by attaching clusters of three eyelets or brads to opposite corners of a photo mat.
• String beads on a length of wire and wrap around a special photo.
• Dangle charms from a small safety pin to create a cute corner for a baby-themed page.
• Using small stickers, punches, or die cuts to decorate a pre-made photo corner is an easy way to reinforce the theme of a page.
• Dried flowers woven through a strip of mesh provide a natural accent for outdoor photos.
• Trim scraps of printed paper with decorative scissors and adhere to the tops of pre-made photo corners.
• Heritage photos look elegant with photo corners wrapped in antique lace.

Although I don’t always use a title for my layout, I do think a properly chosen title is a great way to help reinforce the theme of your page. A title can be a single word, a definition, part of a quote, or a snippet from a song lyric. When you embellish your little using alphabet stamps, letter stickers, chipboard, or other decorative treatments, the title can also serve as an interesting accent.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a suitable title for your page layout, I suggest visiting the following sites:

• http://www.scrapbook.com/titles.php
• http://www.theperfecttitle.com/
• http://scrapsayings.com/
• http://www.wittyliving.com/crafts/scrapbooking/titles/titles_index.html

When you want to include a title on your page and you’re running out of space, it’s time to get creative. Try highlighting key words in your journaling block with chalk, acrylic paint, or a secondary font choice to make an interesting title. For example, in a layout about your son’s first birthday, you could highlight the words “James is one” to make a functional yet unobtrusive page title.

Unless you happen to moonlight as a professional photographer, you’ve probably considered cropping your photos to make a more appealing scrapbook layout. When done carefully, this can be a great way to enhance the subject of your photo. If you’re careless, however, photo cutting and cropping can be a mistake you’ll regret for several years to come.

The first rule of any scrapbook technique that involves permanently altering your photos is to make a copy of the picture first. NEVER cut or crop an original, irreplaceable photo! If it’s not a picture from your digital camera, scan it or take it to a local copy shop before you start your layout.

Next, consider the importance of background details. Cropping is a great way to eliminate clutter from a photo, but sometimes this extra “stuff” has a deeper sentimental meaning. Future generations may want to know what Grandma’s couch looked like in her first apartment or what color Aunt Mary painted her kitchen in 1995. Using a mixture of cropped and uncropped photos is often the best way around this dilemma.

A final word of caution—think twice before cutting your photos into hearts, stars, or other novelty shapes. The occasional circular photo can be appealing, but too many shaped photos looks dated and amateurish.

If you’ve ever been to your local Hobby Lobby or inside the nearest scrapbook supply store, you’ve probably noticed that there are a plethora of scrapbook adhesives to choose from.

At the bare minimum, a beginning scrapbooker needs an adhesive for working with photos and patterned paper as well as some sort of method for adhering dimensional embellishments. I like glue sticks for my general purpose adhesive because they’re cheap and easy to use, although photo tabs are another option to consider as well. For dimensional embellishments, I tend to alternate between glue dots and the super-sticky double sided tape that you can also use for adhering microbeads to your page.

For the serious scrapbooker, a Xyron adhesive machine can be a wonderful tool. This nifty gadget allows you to turn any flat item into your own homemade sticker. If you have a die cut machine such as the Cricut, the Xyron is the easiest way to make sure you have an even coat of adhesive on the more intricate letters. Xyron adhesive machines are available in a number of sizes, ranging from the smallest “X’ machine to models that can handle paper several inches in length. Since the refill price increases with the size of the machine, choose the smallest one necessary to accommodate the size of die cuts you plan to use.

If you’re new to the world of scrapbooking, you’ll need to decide what size of layouts you want to start making.

The 12×12 size is the most common format in the scrapbooking world. Papers and embellishments are widely available and it’s easy to find albums to fit almost any design preference. However, 8 ½ x 11 scrapbooks tend to be cheaper to create because you’re using fewer supplies and it’s easier to incorporate digital scrapbook kit elements and free scrapbook printables into your designs. If you don’t mind a bit of cutting time, you can even use 12×12 papers in your 8 ½ x 11 pages.

Personally, I scrapbook in the 12×12 size almost exclusively. I hate cutting and trimming my papers, so I prefer to simply work with papers that are widely available at my local craft store. I also enjoy the freedom of having a larger “canvas” on which to create my page. But, if I needed to start over, I would be seriously considering the 8 ½ x 11 scrapbook method just because the albums are much easier to store. After six years of scrapbooking, my collection of finished books takes up quite a bit of space. They’re family treasures, but still quite a pain to move!

Since new scrapbook patterned papers are released on an almost daily basis, it’s no surprise that most scrapbooking enthusiasts accumulate paper faster than they can use it. If you’re like me and your scrapbook style is constant evolving, some of this paper probably no longer fits your needs. Here a few ideas to make the most of the excess:

• Paint it with acrylic craft paint.
• Stamp a design over the background.
• Add doodling for a whimsical touch.
• Sand it for a distressed look.
• Give modern paper a heritage feel by misting it with a coat of walnut ink.
• Crumple the paper, then smooth it out to add a hint of texture.
• Tear it into strips before gluing it down to make a multicolored collage background.
• Use circle or square punches to isolate interesting parts of the design, then rearrange the shapes onto a solid colored background.

If you can’t find a way to make your paper work on your layout, try flipping it over to use the white side for matting photos or printing journaling blocks.

If you’re a mom, finding time to scrapbook is probably a constant struggle. However scrapbooking can be a great educational activity for children. You can have your child create his/her own scrapbook using your leftover supplies and duplicate photos or simple give tasks that help you complete your own layouts. Here are some of the ways my toddler has “helped” mommy with her scrapbook projects:

• Sorting embellishments by color
• Finding a particular alphabet sticker to make a title
• Looking for a particular shape of brad
• Putting photos in piles based on who is in them, such as parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles

Although scrapbooking with your kids can be a fun way to enjoy spending time together, don’t forget that children can be messy and careless. Save techniques that involve paint or sharp objects for a time when your children are safely tucked in their beds.