It seems like fun – everyone is doing it – and have you seen those great little doohickeys they have in the stores? These are all great reasons to get started in scrapbooking, so if you’re feeling overwhelmed by it or don’t know how to start, read on.

Start Simple

It’s really important to start archiving all of the family history, arranging all of the family pictures, or just to keep up with the rest of the family scrapbookers, but you don’t have to do it all in your first scrapbooking project.

Begin with a simple project and choose a theme: a certain vacation, a single holiday, a child’s school career, a wedding.

Don’t use all the photos you have, choose a few photos that tell the story you want to tell. Leave the rest of the photos in the shoebox for future projects.

Let go of the pressures by not setting a deadline. Don’t make the story strictly chronological, limit your color theme, set out to design each page differently, or set any unnecessary goals. Just relax and get started.

What You Will Need

Start scrapbooking with the bare necessities or with all the bells and whistles according to your personal style. First, you need an album, so pick one that will go with the idea that you have or let the store supply inspire you. While you’re in the store, pick up some refill pages to fit your album. You don’t want to run out in the middle of your scrapbooking project and discover that these exact pages are difficult to find. Get a good pair of scissors just for scrapbooking, and make sure they are comfortable in your hand and sharp, then keep them with your supplies.

You’ll need adhesive. Find one in the scrapbooking aisle of the craft store. Make sure it’s acid-free and is good for both photos and cardstock, because you will want to choose cardstock and paper to accent your photos. Choose holiday colors for holiday scrapbooking and baby pastels for baby scrapbooking. And lastly, you will need a craft store that specializes in scrapbooking so you can find specialized papers that are available by the sheet.

Stories need words. Select fine-tipped, permanent acid-free pens to supply the words, though, hand-printed titles may require wider tips. This shopping list will get you started, and the scrapbooking supplies in your craft store will show you many more items.

Step One

Find the photos that fit your chosen topic, and choose the two or three colors of paper that will enhance your photos. Select the photo that will be the page’s focus, then crop and mat the photos according to your taste. Add the titling and journaling and all the bells and whistles, like stickers and doodads. Then just arrange all the elements of the page before you start sticking anything on.

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Good luck and good scrapbooking!

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Paper scrapbooking is exactly what it suggests – you are using photos, construction paper, and other supplies to create decorative displays, or scrapbooks. In earlier decades, scrapbooks were very straightforward – they contained pictures that were mounted on grey pages and appeared very uncreative. Who would have thought that twenty years later paper scrapbooking would bring the displays to life and evolve into a craft – easy even for the beginner – and can lead to spending a lot of time, energy, and money on the hobby. Some people have even gone back and restructured their old scrapbooks – there is an upside to the fact that adhesive tape loses its adhesiveness over time, making the pictures easy to remove from older albums.

New to Paper Scrapbooking?

Some of the words in this article are newly formed for the latest phenomenon; scrapbooking is now a verb, and a scrapbooker or scrapper is one who creates scrapbooks. For someone who has never scrapped before, it can be very fun – like learning to knit, paint, or ride a bike – however, as the new artist gets more involved in creating different pages, they might find themselves running back and forth to the craft stores for different papers, stickers, or supplies. There will even be times when the artist has an idea for a page, but can’t find anything for sale to create their vision. In that instance, there are creative ways to make stickers or other graphics.

Making Paper Scrapbooking Accessories

For those scrappers who are comfortable on the computer, it is possible to create stickers for your album if you can’t find them anywhere else. Avery and Staples sell full page transparent sticker sheets; you can print clipart or text or anything else onto the transparent sticker, cut it out, and then glue it to your pages or plastic sleeve. It is also possible to make paper scrapbooking stickers by simply gluing pictures from the computer or magazines directly onto the pages. If you are not web savvy, you can find many different topics of accessories online or even through catalogues, such as the Oriental Trading Company.

Adding Text While Paper Scrapbooking

One of the most fun aspects of paper scrapbooking is the ability to add text in boxes and/or thought bubbles to the page, either of which can be created individually, or they can be purchased ready to be written in. Adding captions to pictures is always fun, but sometimes you don’t even need a picture; try adding a favorite saying or poem to the page? You can even create a border around a picture or the entire page, with words, texts, poetry, etc.

Creating a Paper Scrapbook Album

Once a new scrapbooker is comfortable with the concept, further skill allows for the making of the actual album. There are numerous courses on TV or in craft stores, as well as how-to-manuals available for purchase, that provide an instruction on how to create an actual paper scrapbook album. Some require folding paper along guidelines; some include gluing fabric to cardboard that has been folded, and some involve creating pockets or adding adornments.

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Scrapbooking may seem like a hands-on hobby, but there are many online scrapbooking resources that can help you create more meaningful and coordinated layouts that you can cherish for generations.

Some of the most popular websites that offer valuable guidance are:
www.creativememories.com
www.scrapbooking101.net
www.creatingkeepsakes.com

Some of the ways in which these sites offer online scrapbooking resources include:

* Inspiration: We love our photos and want them to be preserved in an exquisite way that doesn’t take up much of our time or our cash. Is that asking for too much? Not if you have the inspiration from experts in the field. Many of the websites listed above provide free layout pages to serve as inspiration for your next masterpiece.
* Tips and Techniques: If you’ve been to a scrapbooking store recently, you must have noticed the myriad of different gadgets and materials available. Online scrapbooking sites can give you a heads up on what’s hot and what’s not. From product reviews to actual step-by-step instructions for learning a new technique like heat embossing or rubber stamping, you can find it online.
* Downloads: If you’re not too proud of your handwriting, simply download hundreds of fonts from online scrapbooking retailers and experiment with sizes and colors. You can also download tip sheets and instructions in a PDF format to print and save for future reference.
* Related topics: If you have begun to enjoy this art, online scrapbooking sites can provide you with links to other topics that might interest you. For example, now that you have some supplies, how do other scrapbookers organize them? What kind of scrapbooking folders and storage systems are available? Can you use your scrapbooking talent for a good cause? Answers to these and other questions can be found on such online scrapbooking pages.
* Forums: Online scrapbooking can have a different meaning if you start making new friends who share similar interests. Ask a question on a chat board or start your own blog about how you use materials readily available at home to use on your layouts.
* Make money: Online scrapbooking can even become a source of income for you in a number of ways. You could become a consultant for scrapbooking supplies with Creative Memories or Stampin’ Up! and earn commission on your sales as well as generous discounts on products for yourself. You could have your own website and offer to create customized websites for clients or you could offer to teach a scrapbooking class and advertise in an online directory.

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