Congratulations to my Aunt Josie and Uncle Rom who recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary! They are really an awesome couple -- full of life, extremely generous, and just the kind of people you want to hang out with because they are young at heart. To celebrate their anniversary they had a big and fancy shin-dig with friends and family in Canada. My Aunt Josie would like to scrap her pictures from the big event and she asked me for tips on how to scrapbook. I feel like I'm still quite the amateur and not in any position to be giving advice. But I am going to try to help. So while thinking about what to write I realized the title of my blog is "Scrappy Sugar Girl" and I have barely posted anything about scrapbooking. If I came across my blog I would ask, "Where's the scrapbooking?" When I titled my blog I intentionally wanted "scrappy" to have a double entendre for scrapbooking and full of fighting spirit. I think I got the fighting spirit down but not enough scrapbooking stuff.
So...to kill 2 birds with one stone I am sharing some of my pages to make the title of my blog more cohesive and to share some ideas with my aunt. I chose pages that have examples of techniques and wrote details under the photos.
To: Aunt Josie
I have learned there is no wrong way when it comes to scrapbooking because it's all a matter of personal taste. I began by looking at magazines and books and studying layouts and techniques. I have plenty of layouts on Pinterest under a board called
Scrapbooking, Cards and Tags. Looking at pages always gives me inspiration. My personal taste is to have 1 or 2 pics on each page but some people like to put 3-4 pics on each page with simple borders around the pics and a few embellishments.
Small details such as layering papers and adding embellishments add that extra pizzazz. Inking the borders of your papers create depth and also makes the pages look better. I learned about inking techniques from
Tim Holtz's videos. He is a very talented artist and I aspire to be on his level one day in the future. If you watch the videos you will notice that Tim uses water with his Distress Inks. If you want a permanent ink that does not bleed with water use archival ink pads.
I bought a lot of alphabet stickers for lettering before I invested in a Cricut machine. The Cricut allows you to cut out letters in almost any size and also cut out many embellishments you may not be able to find at craft stores. Check out
Cricut here. It's a great investment if you want to make paper crafts, cards and continue scrapbooking.
While buying your supplies you should match your paper and embellishments so you don't spend too much money. When I first started scrapbooking I didn't know what I needed and bought a bunch of stuff just because it was on clearance. I have barely used those supplies. Most stores such as Joann's Fabrics, Michael's, and Hobby Lobby have a coupon ranging from 40-50% each week. But they also have sales every week on scrapbooking supplies. I think the sales would be the same in Canada.
You will definitely need to buy a paper trimmer and acid-free glue. Liquid glues dry much quicker than the glue sticks and are also more permanent. Use liquid glue to adhere metal embellishments (I use Glossy Accents). The great thing about glue sticks is you can re-position your pics and paper before they dry.
I suggest buying a photo album with sheet protectors so you can slide your pages in and out. Store your albums upright if you have 3-D embellishments. If you lay them flat the embellishments will poke through and may possibly cause tears in other pages.
Lastly, if you search "scrapbooking" and "cards" on my blog you can see more pages that I've done.
These pages below reflect some techniques that can be used.
Useful Supplies: embellishments, stamps, chalk, Distress Ink, Distress Ink applicator, Stickles, different types of glue, paper trimmer, scissors with that make different borders, punches.
My first page I ever did. I took the word "scrap" literally.
Details: the words are chunky.
Tags are very popular in scrapbooking. The word engaged is on layered squares of paper I cut out.
Sometimes the paper is so pretty you don't want to cover it up with pictures.
Pictures aren't always necessary. Journaling adds a personal touch to your pages. I printed this page on vellum and used glue dots to hold the paper down. Regular glue shows through the vellum.
Your papers do not have to be straight and even. Tearing the edges is popular in scrapbooking.
This is another one of my earlier pages. I'm not too happy with the turn out but I wanted to show even if there are mistakes it doesn't matter.
Journaling your memories
I sized down photocopies of the receipts of my purchases and attached them to the page.
This pages has examples of inking with Distress Inks.
I wrote words to "I Love Rock and Roll" around the frame of the pics and added glitter
around "I" using Stickles.
I used a border punch to make the frame around the picture and words. I used the Cricut to make the cow and the sheep.
The newspaper ads on this page is actually a stamp.
The papers were originally light gray and light blue but it looked too bright. I used chalk to mute the colors down. I also chalked the flower. I used an old make-up sponge to apply the chalk (pic of chalk in supplies pic). Distress Inks would have worked as well but the chalk is more forgiving.
This is my first time to add thread to a page (red and grey sewing). I didn't have the correct foam mat so
the line came out crooked when I pierced the paper. I just went with the flow and added another crooked line to make the crooked line look intentional.
