Top 5 Inexpensive Scrapbooking Ideas

Scrapbooking is a very enjoyable hobby that allows you to be as creative as you want to be while also organizing bits and pieces of your life for you and your loved ones to enjoy.  Many people, however, find that it is easy to get caught up with scrapbooking and end up spending large amounts of money for materials.

One of the most effective ways to save up on scrapbooking is to live by its name.  When you create pages, do not be shy to use scraps and other recyclable and reusable materials in a creative manner.  You can still have beautiful pages, even if you do not spend too much on commercial scrapbooking materials.

Here are the top 5 ways to use your creativity in creating innovative, inexpensive, and yes, beautiful scrapbook pages.

1. Make your mark!

If you have a scrapbook for your baby, you could use non-toxic coloring material and spread it on his or her feet and hands.  Carefully imprint these on your scrapbook pages.  You can fill one page with hand prints, and the next with foot prints.  You can mix hand and foot prints in one page.  You could also use hand and foot prints as a theme: “Watch my baby grow!” where each page of your scrapbook features hand and foot prints made at the time it was made; recording your baby’s growth over the months.

Hand and foot prints are also great for other kinds of scrapbooks.  If you are making a collaborative scrapbook with your family or friends, you can ask the creator of the page to “sign” the page with his or her hand or foot prints.

2. Go back to nature.

Leaves, flowers, stems.  You can go to your garden and pick up some leaves or flowers, especially those with great fragrances, intriguing shapes, or nice colors.  These make great and lovely borders for your scrapbook pages.  Just make sure to press them first before putting them up on your scrapbook to avoid stains.

3. Summer fun!

If you want to preserve your memories from the beach, you can pick up seashells, multi-colored pebbles, and yes even sand and paste them on your scrapbook pages.  After drying them out in the sun, you can squeeze glue on your pages according to the shape you want and sprinkle sand on it.  You can also color the sand by using chalk.

Beaches also have a lot of multi-colored stones, making it a natural way to add some color to your page.

4. Remember the gifts.

If you are working on your wedding scrapbook, you could make use of the gift wrappers used for the wedding presents you got.  Not only do these wrapping papers make the perfect backgrounds with their intricate, classy and elegant wedding themes and designs, they also add some significance and sentimentality to the page!  More than this, you could probably reuse the gift ribbons too for lovely borders or page section separators.  And the gift tags also make perfect page accents.

Do not stop at gift wrappers.  If you have been on some road trip, you can use maps for backdrops, or pages from the travel brochure you got your ideas from.  Coming from a concert, you might want to save the tickets and the promotional items.

5. Don’t throw out old stuff!

You just elbowed a vase from your night stand?  Check it out to see if there are some ceramic flowers and some other intricate designs that you could use for your scrapbook.

Your iPod headphone just conked out?  You could probably add it as an accent on a music-related scrapbook page you are working on.

Everyday things literally take on a different purpose once you look at it creatively.  Aside from these, you can also cut out some old magazines for your lettering, or create odd shapes out of old boxes.  The possibilities are endless.

Scrapbooking should let you exercise your creativity to the fullest.  Remember that these are pages featuring different works of art that showcase moments of your life.  While it is okay to look at what others have done to get some design ideas, try to be as innovative and original as you can.  Remember that your scrapbook is a testament to your life, having real bits and pieces of your life show up on your pages could make a nostalgia day even more enjoyable!

Scrapbooking for Beginners

Scrapbooking is not a new invention or discovery, precursors of today’s scrapbooks already existed and being used during the 15^th century. “Commonplace Books” as it is earlier called is used to compile diverse information that includes quotes, poems, letters, recipes, and a variety of other things.

Another early form of scrapbook is “Friendship Albums” and became popular during the 16^th century. These albums would normally contain names, messages, and poetry of patrons and friends of the owner and closely resembles our yearbooks today. These may also include souvenirs and local memorabilia’s of places visited or works of artisans they commissioned during visits to other countries.

Although scrapbooking is generally associated with girls, it is also popular with boys though it largely differs in terms of contents and design. Girls are naturally gifted with exceptional creativity and talent for hand-crafted creations.

The invention of photography in the 18^th century is a major breakthrough in scrapbooking. Photographs became incorporated in scrapbooks as well as newspaper clippings.

For Beginners, scrapbooking may seem so overwhelming and exciting. Beginners usually have many ideas but don’t know where to start. First thing to do is to know of the basic scrapbook elements. These basic elements essentially build the scrapbook.

1. Photo. Photos are generally the essence of the layout of scrapbooks. Most scrapbooks usually used pictures as main subject and center of scrapbook layout.
2. Title. Title can be a famous saying, name, or quotes that summarize the content of the scrapbook and give the reader an idea what the scrapbook contains. There are many ways to present or write the title; the most important thing is that title should catch the attention of the reader.
3. Journaling. Journaling is the term used to the text or that explains or describes the photo and expands the theme of the scrapbook. These writing may vary from names and dates, captions, quotes, song lyrics, poetry, and basic information.
4. Embellishment. Decorative add-ups and accents used in the scrapbooks are called Embellishments. These are used to support and dress up the pages of the scrapbooks and can be some of the following; ribbons, buttons, beads, stickers, brads, eyelets, and many other enhancements.
5. Mat. Mats are layers of patterned papers, paints, cardstocks, cloth and other decorative materials that are placed underneath photos. These serve as decorative borders and add an effect on the photos.
6. Anchor. Anchors are decorative elements that attract attention of the readers to the photos. Anchors also act as photo corners where photos are affixed for easy removal when updating or changing layouts. Embellishments can function as anchors.
7. Border. Borders are accents placed along the outskirts of the layout. They add visual impacts and promote visual interest in support to the main contents of the scrapbook’s pages. You can use a variety of materials in borders like metal, tags, fabric, papers, and a lot more.

These elements are the basics of scrapbooking, although these elements may not be always present in a scrapbook altogether. Combinations of these elements are up to your desired layout.

Now that you know the basics and starting to create scrapbooks, here are some useful tips in scrapbooking. These tips are generally helpful for beginners.

1. Learn from others. Try looking and observing other’s scrapbook. It can give you ideas you can also use and incorporate in your design and layout. You can also learn some insights from their mistakes.
2. Be original. Although it is helpful to occasionally copy other’s ideas, modify it and imprint some of your own creativity on it.
3. Organize your ideas and photos. Sort your photos and ideas accordingly; it could be by chronological order, by importance, or by themes. Make sure similar and related photos are grouped together.
4. Use indigent materials. Aside that these materials are abundant and less costly, it can also provide a unique appeal and a peculiar look to your scrapbook.
5. Avoid over-propping. Beginners have too many creative ideas and the tendency to apply these ideas altogether instantly. This results to over-propping the scrapbook. Over-propped scrapbooks are definitely not good to look. It looks very crowded, chaotic, and untidy. Select just few ideas to exploit per scrapbook.