Spice Up Your Scrapbook With Stickers

There are many mediums in the scrapbooking world that are popular even among other industries. One of the most popular is the sticker. Stickers are used in many different craft mediums and also outside of the craft arena.

Another common use for stickers is embellishing scrapbooking pages. With the advent of this very popular craft, every type of sticker imaginable can now be found: acrylic, 3D, cardstock, epoxy, fabric, flocked, sparkly, paper, puffy, vellum and so much more. While in the earlier days of scrapbooking stickers were sold mostly on 2"x6" sheets, now 6"x12" and even 12"x12" size sheets are very common. ~ From Wikipedia

I have always loved stickers; they are fun and playful and a creative way of expressing your likes and even your dislikes. In the world of scrapbooking, stickers are a colorful, creative and very cost effective way to embellish your scrapbook.

Personalized stickers are anything from making stickers with your names on it or any designs that expresses your authentic self. Your uniqueness will radiate on each page and in the design you make.

Sticker makers, on the other hand, are so popular among scrappers since these can be manipulated to produce stickers of your own concept or of your own choice. This is best when you have a specific theme in mind and no commercial sticker satisfies your needs.

In scrapbooking, there would be times when too few ideas come to mind. In that case, you can try using stickers as your background. Again, you can buy them or make your own. Stickers can be layered to create a scene. You can simply attach the stickers on blank papers or cardstocks and spice up the design with other sticky buddies. This is normally used for concepts that portray scenes; like a floral design with lots of butterflies and blooming flowers on it.

Often, no matter how sure we are in placing stickers, we still might find flaws in doing them. Sometimes you misplaced your sticker on the page or layout. What then?

The first solution would be to carefully try and peel off the stickers by using adhesive removers or erasers. This solution might cause some damage on the stickers but with gentle operation, your layout would still be safe.

If you cannot remove the sticker with any other way possible, you might fix it by covering it by a larger one or an embellishment that would cover it entirely. Coordinating papers may work best for your misplaced stickers. The trick here is to make everything intentional.

Sometimes, it is from the mistakes that we create our best work. Who knows how many ideas may sprout from your misplaced sticker?

Now that you are done with your stickers, what do you do with the backing sheets? Don’t throw them out! It’s amazing how much you can do with those blank sheets. You can use them for templates, borders, tags, or acetate pockets, just to name a few.

Happy Scrappin’!

Tapping Into Free Scrapbooking Ideas

Ideas are valuable and a good idea can be hard to come by. Yet, you need ideas to fuel creativity. In scrapbooking, ideas are critical as to whether or not you create a memorable scrapbook. It is actually best that you come up with your own ideas. However, to give you a bit of help, there are free scrapbooking ideas out there.

Here are some places where you can get free scrapbooking ideas:

1) Other people. Of course, ideas come from people; however, you can ask people in conversations for scrapbooking ideas. If they also scrapbook, ask their favorites: layouts, album size, papers, adhesives, embellishments, etc. This can get your creative juices flowing and you can get some really great scrapbooking ideas.

2) The Internet. This is one of the biggest resources for all kinds of free scrapbooking ideas. There are literally thousands of sites that can give you free scrapbooking ideas. By accessing the Internet, you practically access the world. You can look up anything to do with scrapbooking, especially video tutorials. This is what stirred my interest and got my creative juices flowing. I would watch video tutorials and wanting to make what I saw, I also began to tweak ideas to create new ideas.

The Internet will also present what other people think of a particular idea, so you can determine what scrapbooking ideas can work for you. You also get a lot of advice as to how to implement a certain scrapbooking idea. Because of this, you will have an easier time and more creative time designing your own scrapbook.

3) Craft Magazines. Different magazines specialize in crafts and may offer you free scrapbooking ideas. By buying magazines like these, you gain access not only to free scrapbooking ideas, but ideas for other craft projects as well. Also, these magazines can give you various tips on what to do and what not to do when creating your own scrapbook.

What are some of the advantages of free scrapbooking ideas?

1) You save money, of course. By tapping into free scrapbooking sources, you can also make money. Ideas today, especially good ones, can lead to a very lucrative business venture.

2) You save on your effort. By availing of free scrapbooking ideas, you rid yourself the hassle of thinking up a theme or the design of the scrapbook. If you have some free scrapbooking ideas, you can actually just get on with making the scrapbook, without the hassle of coming up with themes or ideas. Check out those video tutorials, lots of them offer scrapbooking ideas based on the papers or the size of the album. This can save you a lot of effort.

3) You also save time by availing yourself of free scrapbooking ideas. With time saved, you have more time to make more scrapbooks!

Happy Scrappin’!

Finding Inspiration

Creative inspiration is everywhere you look. My favorite places for inspiration are magazines; especially arts and craft magazines. These could lead to finding new color schemes and layouts for your pages. Billboards, advertisements, movie posters, and simply the scenes of your neighborhood can also become sources of inspiration if you look at the world with a scrapbooking eye.

However, pictures are not the only thing that will inspire you for a new page idea. You will have plenty of words and feelings to help you along the way. A funny or moving quote can be used on a page as an embellishment, or perhaps a catchy phrase can become the theme and title of your layout. You may just need to break out from the visual arts and try to find inspiration in other places. Some of my best page ideas come to me when I’m doing something totally unrelated to layout design, such as reading. Take a break and walk away from your scrapbooking space. If you just change your scenery, you will be amazed at the wonderful and unique pages you could create.

Friends can be a good source of inspiration as well. You will also want to ask for advice on any layouts and see examples of their scrapbooks to help you to find some type of inspiration. Also, check other scrapbooking websites and join scrapbook forums to get more ideas. I love watching the video tutorials on YouTube as there is no shortage of ideas, tutorials and inspiration to choose from.

The best sources of inspiration are the pictures themselves. You may want to pull designs and colors from the pictures. You may also want to use the pictures to help you to determine the layout and what your options are pertaining to the layouts. Allow your subjects to inspire you. After all, they are the focal point of your layout.

Happy Scrappin!

Journaling Your Scrapbook

One of the most forgotten steps when you create a new scrapbook is to journalize it. The reason why journalizing is important is so that you can remember what was going on; so you can reflect years and years later and remember more clearly. Journalizing each page also adds a personal touch to the scrapbook – because no one remembers any event exactly the same.

You can begin by creating a title for each page. Think of your page as a story and then name it. Use big bold letters for the title to draw attention to it, but make sure it does not overwhelm the most important elements of the page – the pictures.

Each picture on your page should have a few words as a caption. You will want to name the people in the pictures or the places shown. Others who do not know all of your friends will also benefit from these labels. You also want to think about captions as a small element on a page and you may only want to use a caption occasionally and not put one on every picture.

You will also want to include text into your page design. Many pre-made layouts will already include a space for text. Use this element of the design to record the “story” behind the pictures. What would you tell a dear friend looking through the album? All of this information is easily forgotten, so it is important to jot down a few words on a piece of notebook paper and save it with your photographs if you think that you won’t get the chance to create your pages right away. Time just seems to blend the years together. Very few people can remember everything they did by date, but if you include a date or time you will be able to preserve the memories.

Occasionally you may forget your camera at an important event, lose your pictures, or not be allowed to use a camera in the space. Even if you went somewhere and you didn’t take pictures, you can still document that part of your life by using the scrapbook to document. These pages will be mostly journaling. Use descriptive words to take the place of the photographs. You may also add stock photos or a photo of the one telling the story.

You can use letter stickers and cutouts to help you to journalize, but using your own handwriting will give your album added character. However, you can also use your computer to print out some journalizing elements on your pages. You will want to choose some way of journalizing that will allow you to scrapbook in a dramatic way and help create a wonderful and memorable album.

Happy Scrappin!

So You Want to Scrapbook?

Learning to scrapbook takes commitment, like creating a piece of art. When you learn to scrapbook enjoyably, you will also get to know the basics – like tools, supplies, and techniques. You can do beginners projects or more advanced techniques, but it will be very rewarding once you are done. It can be quite enjoyable and the memories that you gather can be passed down to future generations.

There are some basics tools that you will need to get before you start your scrapbooking journey. Every good scrapbooker needs a cutting tool. You will need to get sharp scissors and specialty scissors that will cut scalloped edges, but you may also want something that will cut a straight line and circles. You will also need some kind of adhesive. Beginners may find that the easiest products to buy are photo mounts, which are tiny pre-cut pieces of tape, and glue dots, which are pressure-sensitive strong spots of glue to hold larger embellishments. Beyond a cutting tool and adhesive, you really don’t need any other tools to get started, but if you want to create fancier pages, many options are available including rubber stamps, ink pads and paper punches. Start with a few smaller items and increase your inventory as you learn more and more scrapbooking skills.

You will also need a few basic supplies before you begin. Of course, you will need to have an album and some pictures. You can either get a pre-made album or create your own album. Your album can be any size you need. The only other supply that you will need to get your scrapbook album started is the paper. Most albums come with a white piece of paper in each sheet protector, but there are many colors and designs to choose from to help spice up your album. Other supplies that add interest to your pages including stickers die cuts, and three-dimensional elements.

Once you get the basic tools and supplies, then all you need is your imagination! You can also attend or join a scrapbook workshop or club or an online forum to get more tips and techniques. There are countless tutorial videos on YouTube to also help you get started.

Happy Scrappin!

How to Make Crumpled Flowers

Video Using Once Upon A Time Papers

Scrapbooking?

Can anyone give me some good tips on scrapbooking? My siblings and I are planning to make a Family Scrapbook for our parents and none of us has ever made one before. We have the ideas, but we haven't done the first thing because we don't know what to do. Can any experienced scrappers help us? Appreciate the help.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Even tho I notice 12x12 size album is recommended here, I personally prefer letter size, 8.5x11, for many reasons. While it is true that most scrapbook products you find are for 12x12, they can be resized smaller, whether paper or digital. One reason for my preference is supplies are far less expensive, far! You can buy a regular 3-ring binder and use it for your scrapping. I put absolutely everything in sheet protectors, and they are less expensive in the smaller size also. This keeps oopsies off of your pages.

Another reason is that you can move your pages in order and even move them from album to album. Since I started scrapping about 10 years ago, I've moved my pages many times, and I've changed my mind about how I want to organize them. You could do it by year, or by topic, or by family group or or or or - whatever you choose. Sometimes I want to extract a few pages of a particular subject and take them to show, and it is very easy to do in the smaller size. Once you put them in the larger albums, most of the time they are difficult to move, or maybe in some cases not even possible. Top loading - absolutely.

Some scrappers are also crafters. If you are, you have the opportunity of making some cute individualized covers for your three ring binders. Since they are inexpensive, you don't mind covering them.

I do think that before you do anything very permanent, you need to determine what size page you want.

Something I learned to do after I had been scrapping a couple of years was a better way to use sheet protectors. Say I went somewhere and picked up a postcard or other souvenir. Also I have a ticket stub, or maybe an airline boarding pass. I put these and any other memorabilia together in my protector until I'm reading to scrap. If I have to wait to get my pictures developed, this is a great way to hold like things together. Maybe I'll even jot down my journaling thoughts while I'm waiting to get the page scrapped. That way I don't forget what I want to say, even if I go back five years later to make the page. If I am using digital pix, I always print out a contact thumbnail sheet of the picture(s) and put it in the protector. Unfortunately, there have been times when I lost the pix on my computer and my little thumbnail is all I had for a picture. As bad as the quality is and as small as it is, it's still better than total wipeout.

From Yahoo Answers!

Organizing Your Scrapbooking Area

When it comes to thousands of different types of scrap booking papers and other accessories you will find that it can all be overwhelming. Since you have so many options, you will find that it can be difficult for a person to scrapbook when they are in a small apartment or dorm room, but you can get organized and keep things looking good and clean and that will help you to be able to scrapbook more efficiently.

It will take up the most space and time when it comes to getting your papers organized. A good option for this is a paper saver, as made by most of the larger scrap booking companies. These folders are made of plastic most of the time and they can be tagged and hold hundreds of papers. This will help you to categorize your papers. If you find that you do not have enough room in a paper saver, you might also find it useful to invest in a filing cabinet or one of the sets of drawers made especially for scrap booking. You can purchase these in any of the local craft stores or online.

Once you have a tool for organization, the next step is to decide how you want to categorize your supplies. You will find that color is most often used, but you can make it into a theme like a certain day or holiday. You may also want to think about making patterns like stripes. You can also use this system to organize flat embellishments, such as die cuts or stickers.

You also need a place to store your tools and embellishments that are not easily filed. You will find that one good way is to use baskets and a shelving system to help you to store and organize your tools and embellishments. Try storing cutting tools in one basket, glues in another, markers and paint in a third, and so on. By buying baskets in bulk, you will save more money than if you use photo boxes, and the display will be uniform and attractive. Make sure that you label your baskets or shelving so that you can find everything quickly and easily.

If you need to save space, a basket and shelving system may not work for you. You will want to make a kit of some of your most often used tools and supplies so that you can keep them close and you won’t have to dig or look for them. That way when you only have time to do a quick page or two, you can use your kit to complete it and then quickly clean up.

Keep in mind that the space you use to scrapbook is clean and organized. This will allow you to enjoy your time scrap booking. When you learn how to label the storage containers and organize your papers, you will be able to quickly pull out the tools you need. If you are really into scrap booking, you will take the time to label your storage containers to avoid a distracting mess. Once you have gotten all of your supplies organized, you will be very comfortable with scrap booking.

Free Scrapbooking Ideas