How to Begin Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking can be an extremely rewarding hobby. It gives you the ability to spend lots of time looking at pictures of your children, pets, and other things you love. It allows you to express creativity and love for those things in a very real way that you can show them and others how much you care about the memories you share.
That being said, it doesn’t mean that scrapbooking is easy. Starting from scratch presents a pretty steep learning curve, but one of the reasons scrapbooking is a great hobby to have is that there is no one “right” way to do it. It’s all about your own personal design aesthetic and what you think looks pretty. Others may not agree with you, but that’s ok, they don’t have to. Your scrapbook is for you and your loved ones, and as long as preserves memories in a way you think is beautiful, then you don’t need anyone’s approval from the outside.
To begin, you’re probably going to need to stop by your local scrapbook store. If there isn’t a scrapbook store around you, then you should look to the internet. Of course Wal-Mart or major crafts chains carry scrapbooking supplies, but the selection isn’t very good. The last thing you want is to end up with a scrapbook page you don’t like because your supplies were so limited to what the store had on the shelves. Online, there is virtually nothing that you can’t buy related to scrapbooking.
The basis of any scrapbook page is paper. There are many different styles and brands of scrapbooking paper with different kinds of patterns and weights. Depending on your preferences, you may want to buy paper that has a lot of patterns and adornments, or that is very “busy,” but remember that if you want to add other embellishments to it later then it may not look good. So if you’re just starting out, just buy different kinds of paper. Your best bet is to buy an assortment pack which contains all kinds of different designs based around a specific theme.
Once you have paper, you need to think about how you want to embellish the page. Do you want to use stamps? Stickers? Holes? Buttons? Do you want to write on the page (called journaling)? Think about all the things you may want to add and look around for those. Experienced scrapbookers have troves of supplies because they buy what they think will look pretty on a page but may not use it for a long time.
You will also need glue. Don’t just go to the grocery store and pick up a tube of Elmer’s. You want a glue that won’t make your pictures look like their glued on. You want a glue that is clear and strong but also very thin. Scrapbook stores both online and offline carry glue specifically designed for scrapbooking, and this is what you’ll need.
Lastly, you will need an album. A scrapbooking album isn’t like a regular photo album, and you will need to get one that matches the size of the paper you got.
Once you have paper, embellishments, glue, and an album, all you need are photos to scrapbook! You may want to make a scrapbook with a specific theme, for example, an entire scrapbook based on your family’s vacation, or you may want to make a general scrapbook that doesn’t have a running theme. Either way, you’re going to have all the things you need to preserve your family’s memories in a beautiful and meaningful way, so get out there and scrap!
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