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My Simple Scrapbooking Steps
Ok, you have a stack of photos from your trip and you are ready to start scrapbooking your memories!
But where to start? Sometimes I think we make this process way to complicated!! Especially if you have checked out magazines and websites with very fancy pages. We get overwhelmed that we can't put our pages together like they have.
The purpose of this page is to remind you to keep to this simple, easy process! Overtime, your pages will become fancier with practice. You will also find the look that works for you and your photos.
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Step 1. Pull out your tools.
You'll need:
- your photos from some occasion
- a paper trimmer
- a good pair of scissors
- tape runner
- a couple sheets of printed paper and a couple sheets of solid colored paper
- a few embellishments (might be letters, stickers, ribbon, brads, and/or buttons)
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Step 2. Setup your background paper.
For this layout, I picked some camping printed paper for our trip to Tennessee.
I found some coordinating striped paper for an accent trim on the top and bottom of my pages. I could have placed these along the sides, or in the corners, it's totally up to you.
I also matted the striped paper, just because the stripes and camping papers were both a little busy.
By matting, I mean that I cut some brown paper and placed it behind the striped paper. I left about a 1/4 inch of brown showing. By doing this, the striped paper doesn't touch the camping paper.
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Step 3. Add your embellishments.
I added letters and leaves that spelled "Tennessee" across the first page.
I also added a journal box and some bigger leaves across the bottom of the second page.
The journal box is made from a simple square piece of green paper, again matted with brown.
There's no wrong way to add embellishments. Just don't overfill the page, you need room for your photos!
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Step 4. Decide on which photos to use.
Folks have told me this is the hardest part. You take a zillion photos on your trips, especially now with digital cameras.
I find that the easiest way to whittle your photos down to only the ones you want, is to make a list of what you did on the trip. I believe you will enjoy looking at your pages if you don't have many similar photos repeating.
For this trip, we were visited by a neighborhood kitten, photos of the cabin itself, adorable pictures of the kids, and the fun swim in the hot tub. You can see my little post its labeled "cat", "cabin", "ah!", and "hot tub".
I sorted the photos into categories. Next, I went thru and picked the best photo that described that part of the trip.
You can fit one to four photos on a 12x12 page. So try to whittle your pile down to 2 to 8 photos. If you have more, it's no problem, you will just have more than a 2 page layout. For some large trips or parties, you may have 6 or 8 pages. For a cruise or once in a lifetime trip, you may decide to do an entire album for that special event.
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Step 5. Decide where to place the photos.
Trim your photos. Some people find this step complicated. Remember to "remove" background junk from your photos by trimming so that your subject is the main portion of the photo.
Mat your photos. I used my solid color paper to mat the photos. Again, by matting, I mean to place the solid color paper behind your photo, leaving 1/4 or 1/8 inch showing around your photo.
Select one or two special photos to double mat. Here you can see that I matted the photo of my son, looking adorable, with brown and green paper. The green is 1/8 inch and the brown is a little bigger with 1/4 inch showing. (And believe me, I'm not measuring this, I just placing on my paper trimmer and eye-balling these).
More the photos around, noticing the balance of the page. This is personal preference.
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Step 6. Finalizing everything on your pages.
Ok, now you have all the pieces:
- background pages, from step 2
- embellishments, from step 3
- your photos whittled down from step 4, matted and arranged from step 5
It's time to glue down all the pieces! Also notice that I wrote about the trip inside the journal box. I included the date and things I wanted to remember about the trip. |
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