Tips for Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is a hobby or craft that is related to pasting newspaper clips, magazine articles, and personal photographs or other into customized decorated albums or scrapbooks. So if you too share in the same interest you should choose the right paper, templates and ideas to make your own scrapbook.

1. You need to choose the right paper for your project as there are a variety of scrapbook papers available. Cardstock is a heavy weight paper mainly used for your page layout especially for photo mats and paper piercing. Background and Texture paper is used to decorate the background of your scrapbook pages. Gingham paper is a patterned paper used for background accents on your scrapbook pages. Mulberry paper adds a bit of “flair” to your pages whereas Vellum looks very elegant and could be used for masking an image or embossing. When you choose a scrapbook paper for your memory books always choose one that is acid free so that the photographs you need to preserve are not ruined.

2. There are different scrapbooking templates that you can use for your scrapbook pages like the lettering templates, envelope templates, die cut templates that shall assist you in making the perfect design for your scrapbook layouts.

3. A scrapbooking technique known as “Inking” offers a lot of variety whereby there is no specific way to ink your pages and you can use as much ink as you like in your project. For this you need to have 1) scrapbooking paper, 2) clean and dry sponge, ink pads of your choice and other supplies such as stamps, stickers, templates.

First you should cut your desired mattes and papers, then dab the paper in the inkpad and turn it into various directions. It will create a smudged color on your paper and then use a sponge to fill in the color in uneven areas you like. It adds a depth to your pages and gives an antique and weathered look by enhancing your paper and adding to overall layout.

4. You can even use craft punch templates that comes in different shapes and are usually only an inch or two in dimension. Punch your shape on the scarp book paper and place it on a copier with a dark sheet of paper covering the punched potion and lastly enlarge it to your desired size and cut out the black punch pieces for templates. This way you have some nice shapes for your scrap book layouts.

5. For beginners, there are some tools such as Eyelet setters, decorative scissors, paper trimmers that shall help you to get start off with the whole fun.

6. You can also include quotes to add some elegance to your page layouts. Thus your scrapbook will become unique and also interesting for others to view.

For more information log on to craft-books.net

Olivia Andrews, writer of craft-books.net is a freelance journalist and has written many reviews on subjects such as finance, education, health, entertainment, music, gifts, crafts, travel, apparels and mobile phones.