scrapbooking pages

So, the other day, a good friend of mine, told me that she was interested on making one, and asked me on how to do so. I am by no mean an expert on that, but I think I will write down what I have learnt so far.

I think the trickiest thing is the price =p First time I am seeing some finished results on store, I thought: Oh nice! What I didn't realize at that time was that if it was my first time doing scrapbook, a page like that could cost me USD50-100 or even more. I am not exaggerating, sadly. A nice puncher costs quite a lot and as a beginner I had none at home =(

Admittedly, my first thought of scrapbooking is a glorified cut and paste =p. In fact, I still think that if I want to make it with as low a budget as possible, cut and paste is the best.

If you want to make a scrapbook, the first thing is selecting the pictures. I saw some people that put emphasis on the moment or the feeling or the memories of the pictures, even if the pictures themselves are not the best shots they have. Some other people put emphasis on the face, and use photos with little or no background visible, because the page is more about the person or the action said person did (like a kid's first step, new baby, etc). My preference is picture with clear background, because I associated the background with my memories and experiences.

There's no minimum or maximum number of photos that can be used on a page, as long as the picture(s) can be displayed nicely on the page.

Next is choosing the paper. For coordinated papers, those that came from the same designer usually definitely had the same style. Better yet, some designer made a set of coordinated papers under a theme. Of course, some people probably prefer contrasting or mix style. I think as long as it's agreed with the pictures and complimented said picture, there's no hard rules. Still, for the first time, using papers from the same theme is the easiest =)

If your budget is low, I think paper with patterns (maybe even glitters) is the nicest. It will give the page some decorations without needing to buy additional elements. You can also buy another paper with a lot of pictures on it, cut them, and paste them on the main paper =)

Then, there's the glue. The glue for scrapbooking, like the papers, supposed to be acid free (and more expensive than normal glue).

That's my first scrapbooking page, made in my beginner course in PaperMarket. Not only I got to know the basic of scrapbooking, I could use their puncher for the butterflies and border =)

For the one above, I was thinking of trying to use template and ink. The only ink that I have is Tsukineko's Versa inkpad, so please excuse the results, since I am not supposed to use ink pad ink with brush for that =p. I also found out that dark background is not exactly supportive to my ink =p

I love frames for my pictures, but putting my pictures on a stock card and cut it seems like a waste, because there's no need for the stock card that was covered by my photos. So I cut a few strips of the plain paper, and glued it on the sides of the photos.

This was not the end results. I plan to use a strip of paper for putting the event's name. Using ready made alphabets probably nicer and easier, but they are not cheap. I still have to buy the archival quality ink pen for writing it, though...