Scrapbooking: From Hobby to Profession

17 January 2008

Scrapbooking is a great hobby and creative outlet, but can make a good business too. It used to be something done in the home or at a craft store table among a few friends for personal enjoyment. Today it can be an avenue to financial success as well.

Society is starting to appreciate the value of scrapbooking for its preservation of family histories. Many people would like to see their photographs turned into family heirlooms, but they don’t have the time or the creative inclinations to do it themselves.

Professional scrapbookers are experts in the field. They’ve published in magazines such as Creative Keepsakes or perhaps contributed to idea books. Some professional scrapbookers even develop their own following of enthusiasts who share a love for their unique style.

Some professional scrapbookers hire out their services. They help organize photos for placement into an album then create designs and add beautiful detail to showcase your photographs in album you’ll cherish. Providing services in this fashion is similar to being an interior designer. It’s an interpersonal business relationship between a consultant and a client who wishes to pay for the artist’s creative vision. Typical scrapbook artists can earn from $50-$150 per hour.

You can meet professional scrapbook artists on-line. They can provide tips and techniques on the art of scrapbooking as well as how to make it a profitable business. Becoming a professional scrapbooker may appeal to the more experienced enthusiast because of the flexibility, ability to work out of the home, and potential for profit. Just like any career, it requires dedication, passion, and hard work. Once you learn the craft well, it may be an opportunity that interests you.

Free Printable Scrapbook Images

14 January 2008

Scrapbookers are generally a creative and talented lot, but like the rest of us, they’re usually short on time. Here are some ways to save time on scrapbook designs without spending money. Of course, you can use a variety of things like Christmas card fronts, newspaper clippings, and other found items for layouts and backgrounds. (Just remember to apply archival spray!) But there are tons of things available on the internet for free which require no rummaging for just the right picture or article. All that’s required is a simple search for your theme or topic then a quick download on the computer.

There are thousands of images to choose from, ranging from holidays, birthdays, vacations, etc. A single site may not provide everything you need, but most provide links to other relevant sites which can provide more content choices.

Use these images you download from the computer with a scanned photo then print onto photo paper, and voila!, you have created something unique and attractive to include in your scrapbook. Combine your traditional methods with new, high tech innovations such as this to enhance your scrapbook design!

Most of the pictures are in .pdf format and can be printed when opened in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Make sure you have this program downloaded (look for a free version on the internet) to begin enjoying all of the free printable images available.

Creating a Scrapbook Without Using Computer Generated Fonts

10 January 2008

A scrapbooker can use four basic items if she wishes to letter her albums without a computer:

1. Templates- While it is so much more personal to include journal-style entries in your own unique handwriting, many aren’t confident with their penmanship. With the immense popularity of scrapbooking, you can now choose from a wide selection of templates to trace fancy, stylish lettering. You can choose from many variations of alphabet styles which are available in different sizes. Just select the most appropriate size and style for your album. Trace the letters straight to the page using a pencil. After making sure that you have created the layout you want, you can use an archival quality ink to go over the letters permanently.

2. Stamps- Stamps offer a lot of variety for designing your pages in a vast array of colors. Make sure that you use archival-quality ink, acid-free paper for the stamped designs. You don’t want your work of art to become yellow or brittle over time.

3. Stickers- Stickers to enhance the look of your album can be found in many arrangements from alphabet groupings to sets of words, phrases, or quotations. Check to be sure that the stickers you select are acid-free.

4. Die-cut Designs- Similar to stickers but lacking adhesive, die-cut letters may be affixed to your scrapbook pages. Many designs are available on-line or in craft stores. You only need to paste them onto the page.

Of course, you can always opt for the most personal lettering of all: your own unique handwriting! It’s something your family will treasure even if you don’t have perfect penmanship.

Scrapbooking: Tips for Do-It-Yourselfers

7 January 2008

With all of the opportunities for taking photos in the life of a typical American family, most people are left with stacks of vacation, birthday, ball game, ballet recital, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas photos, just to name a few. Most of the time they are tucked away from sight to be dealt with later. With the popularity of scrapbooks, many have taken up the hobby as a way to organize, preserve and display their memories so they may be enjoyed rather than collect dust.

While a few order custom, ready-made designs on-line, most take the do-it-yourself approach to add a personal touch and feed a desire to be artistic. Thousands of sites offer ready-made materials to create beautiful albums, but the DIYers prefer creating their own unique and personal designs. Not limiting themselves to paper, adhesive, and markers, they utilize everything from natural materials such as leaves, dried and pressed flowers, and rocks to wire and beads.

While a scrapbooker is limited only by her creativity in coming up with designs, there are some requirements for the safe preservation of the photographs.

First of all, use only acid-free, PVC-free, photo-safe paper. Otherwise, the paper will fade fast and can lead to the yellowing and deterioration of photos.

Secondly, use decorative materials which are not photo-safe sparingly and apply an Archival spray. It is relatively inexpensive and works like a spray laminate. It is useful for those wanting to includes items such as brochures, menus, and ticket stubs in their albums.

Lastly, be careful that when printing graphic designes, you use a laser printer as often as possible. Non-laser printers use ink that is water-soluble and may bleed into the paper. Using printed material sparingly will minimize the deterioration of album pages.

Easy Ideas for Designing Scrapbook Layouts

3 January 2008

There are many factors to consider when designing an album like the season and occasion, for instance. Scrapbooking supply stores sell stickers and die-cut items with specific themes such as graduation, birthday, or Easter, but for other events like a baby’s first haircut, or a trip to a remote foreign country, you may not find the right commercial products. Ideas are readily available on the internet if you have the patience to surf hundreds of thousands of web pages showing themes and designs. Some more adventurous scrapbookers go it alone and simply rely on on their imagination to create their designs.

Follow these guidelines for Success:

Gather All Items to Be Used- By organizing the photos and other materials to be used, you can get a better idea of how to create layouts. Some items may need to be prepared before mounting, so it will be best to gather everything first.

Decide on Colors to Use- Colors of the page can be inspired by the colors in the photograph or they could contrast with the photo to make it stand out. The color wheel is often used to create a desirable color-combination. You might use a combination of blue and orange, for example, because these two colors complement each other. Also try putting dark colors against white, or light colors against black, for easier visibility.

Create A Layout- You can lay the materials on the mounting page to make sure that everything will fit. There may be a need to get several copies of a particular item, such as a map or brochure, so you can cut it up and paste it on the scrapbook page. Don’t forget to spray items such as this with Archival Spray to prevent deterioration.

Utilize Free On-line Resources and Magazines- As mentioned, you can go online to search for different designs for your scrapbook. There are several websites that offer free downloadable designs that you can just print out and cut. There are also numerous magazines such the popular Creating Keepsakes, Memory Makers, and others available for creating more unique designs. Browse through these at your local craft store. And don’t forget to steal a few ideas from your next Crop Till You Drop night with friends.

How to Choose a Scrapbook Theme

7 November 2007

Scrapbooking is not something you can simply start doing without a plan. You need to figure out what your scrapbook theme will. There are numerous ideas like Christmas, baby scrapbook, birthday, other holidays, the choices are endless. But it will be much easier if you take some time to plan what theme you will be scrapbooking. If nothing else it will help you when you are choosing your embellishments.

Scrapbooking - Think About Your Theme

When the time comes to start a scrapbook, one thing you need to consider first is what you want the theme to be. The theme you choose dictates almost everything about your scrapbooking, including the content, photos and calligraphy you use.

The theme of your scrapbook can be simple or complex. Your theme could be a special event such as a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding, Christmas, or Halloween. Themes can also be personalized to the scrapbook recipients special interests. Special interest themes include favorite colors, sports, favorite television programs, music, the outdoors, or cultural influences.

What is the overall purpose for your scrapbook? Who is the scrapbook for? Who is the scrapbook about? The answers to these three questions are all factors in selecting an appropriate theme. For instance, the scrapbook you are giving your nephew as he graduates from medical school will be completely different to the grandparent book you send your mother. Your nephew will probably appreciate a scrapbook with photographs, poems, journals, and more masculine embellishments. Perhaps, the theme of the scrapbook could be medicine. You could create embellishments that look like scalpels and tweezers around various pictures of your nephew during his college years. Read the rest of this entry »

Scrapbooking Ideas to Help Build Your Pages

29 May 2007

Most people get all stressed when trying to come up with scrapbooking ideas. It’s really simple. Just do what comes to mind. Make a few mistakes. Try different things. I mean, your first couple of scrapbooking pages may look like crap. And certainly if you continue to scrapbook and look back on your early works you may laugh at how bad they were, but also marvel at how much you have improved. Just try something. Just do something. Any scrapbook idea is better than nothing.

Here are some great ideas for you to use when making the ultimate scrapbook:

1. Album

You can buy these online or at a local crafts store. The album that you choose will dictate the overall design of the album so take your time in picking one.

Look at the material used in the paper. If you plan to make a collage and include heavier materials, look for a thicker paper. The regular thickness of craft paper will do if you just want to stick many different photos in your scrapbook.

There are various sizes to choose from, beginning from a letter-size album which is 8 ½” x 11” or the smaller square-sized paper of 6” or 8”.

For a smaller format, you can use just one or two pictures to showcase on each page and just add on embellishments.

2. Themes

Look around you and you will surely find an inspiration when it comes to the theme of your scrapbook.

The weather is one example, look for a bright-orange or yellow-based color. Then, you could cut out photos of sunflowers and loop a yellow yarn and glue it on to represent the sun.

Next, paste the pictures on the pages of your scrapbook and finish up with writing a personalized quote or paste a clipping from a newspaper. Glue on additional memorabilia of a different medium then your scrapbook is as good as gold.

3. Borders

You can use the same theme for the borders as the page itself or the borders of the photos.

Pasting a picture on top of a paper which will serve as your border will add depth to your scrapbook layout.

You can also cut a big shape then inscribe another shape or pattern – like a square inscribed in a circle, then place the photo underneath the border.

4. Design and Layout

You can either go with the theme and coordinate it with the design or make a completely different design altogether. Within the layout, you can go with the standard photos or memorabilia items in the middle or you can put them on either side of the page.

These are just some simple scrapbooking ideas you can try. You just have to start something. Make a page. Fix a page. Just keep building a scrapbook page until you get it the way you like it then move on to the next. The next will probably show your improvement.

Creative Memory Scrapbooks Help Preserve Memories

7 November 2006

People love to keep ahold of their memories. And the best way to do that is through creative endevours like scarpbooking. We all grab our camera and snap picture after picture in an effort to hold on to the memory. A child’s birthday. Or a baby’s first step. Graduation. Weddings. It’s all there for us to remember. And that is why scrapbooking is important. If we do it.

Unfortunately most mementos go to waste. Photographs just keep piling up on boxes and drawers (or in the hard drive, to be digitally appropriate). Luckier pictures may end up in stacks of albums but most people rarely care to view them. As much as most people want to reminisce about important milestones in their lives, keeping tokens becomes so much of a routine that their value sometimes end up forgotten. This defeats their purpose.

Luckily, such a situation can be avoided with an emerging hobby called creative memory scrapbooking. Mementos are given back their significance, keeping the memories alive.

Creative memory scrapbooking is basically an inventive approach to keeping memories. Creative memory scrapbooks are beyond typical photo albums. They are hybrids of albums, journals, and scrapbooks. The combination of these kinds of memoirs makes personal stories and reminiscing more interesting. This makes sharing treasured moments to others or just recalling them alone more fun and exciting.

Normally people just collect pictures and souvenirs randomly. Once they pile up, they end up in the attic or the basement and then they are completely forgotten. The rare chances that they might be viewed could be just as boring as they are nothing but random clips of memory that do not tell anything. With creative memory scrapbooks, memories come back to life when the books are viewed. Pictures make more sense as they are paired with words or laid out in an organized fashion. Reliving moments preserved in the scrapbooks could be a good way to keep family ties and strengthen bonds. Additionally, well kept books could serve as heirlooms that would keep a family’s legacy throughout the coming generations.

Making creative memory scrapbooks is quite easy. Nowadays most craft stores have creative memory sections dedicated for the making of such scrapbooks. There are also some scrapbook-making kits available in bookstores and online.

Don’t let your memeories just sit in a cardboard box gathering dust put them in a cretive memory scrapbook. You will be happy you did and so will the generations that come after you. They will cherish those memories too.

Baby Scrapbooking Idea

22 October 2006

I bet that if you ask someone why they started a scrapbook most would say to collect their baby’s memories. So many people want to save memories of their baby in special scrapbooks. I think it is for both parents to look at to remember their baby and also as something to pass on to the kids when they get older. Your whole family will enjoy the scrapbook for many years to come.

If you are wondering what baby scrapbooking idea would be appropriate to put in the scrapbook, hopefully this list will help.

Your baby shower pictures, and other times when you were pregnant, make great scrapbooking ideas to kick off the beginning of the book.

Being in the hospital for check ups and eventually the delivery day.

Visitors at the hospital, the nurses, and doctor who were present the day you gave birth to your baby.

The day of your baby’s birth.

For the first year you can take a picture every day and gradually show the changes in the baby and/or what cute things he/she did everyday.

The ‘firsts’ in your baby’s life such as: first day at home, first holidays, first haircut, first bath, first smile, first steps, and first birthday.

The impressions of his/her hands, feet, or lips. Maybe place a lock of your babay’s hair in there.

Using Scrapbooking Software to Help Create Your Memories

30 September 2006

Scrapbooking used to be a hobby that involved alot of paper, photos, glue and pens. In these days of digital everything it’s really no surprise that scrapbooking software is becoming more popular. In many respects it is more convenient and quicker to create scrapbooks on the computer. People already create websites and blogs and who knows what with complicated software so it’s no wonder that digital scrapbooking software would become popular as well. The die-hards may think it is a little less personal but I tend to think that as long as you are getting your memories saved it is all good.
Making scrapbooks is definitely one of the most well-known hobbies that people engage in all over the world. There are many kinds of scrapbooks, and various ways to create them. One who is seriously interested in scrapbooking will be amazed at the amount of creative choices that can be afforded to them.

One of the tools used in scrapbooking is software that can make the process easier and make the book look more creative. Hobbyists have many software tools to choose from to aid them in making that perfect scrapbook.

Here are examples of the most popular scrapbooking software available on the market:

1. American Greetings Crafts! and Scrapbooks & More
There will be no end to creativity when you uses this software released by Broderbund, because it allows you to make crafts in 3D. You simply select a scrapbook format, then the software can personalize it all throughout, using items such as stickers, photos, backgrounds and borders.

2. Nova Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 3.0
It has everything needed by a scrapbook fanatic to create books with awesome design, and can be used for other projects as well. Customization is a breeze with its extensive templates and graphics, finished with truly beautiful and unique fonts. Other projects that this software can be used for are trading cards, journals and photo frames.

3. Hallmark Scrapbook Studio Deluxe 3.0
Hallmark makes it easy for scrapbookers to create and share precious albums to families and friends. It has all the tools and applications needed to produce professional looking albums. Its features include templates and custom projects, customized lettering, special effects, amazing graphics and borders and drawing tools.

4. Creating Keepsakes� Scrapbook Designer Platinum v.3
Creating Keepsakes has an incredible array of projects aside from the scrapbook itself, such as bags and buttons. Creativity is never a problem with all the tools available for the user-photo frames, button, pop-up cards…and more! It is a very flexible tool because it can be easily used by beginners but also serve advanced crafters well.

There are many different ways that users can utilize to create their scrapbook. Aside from the usual materials, there are many software tools available that will enable the user to explore his creativity. By producing breathtaking designs, more and more people will be encouraged to get into scrapbooking.

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