Scrapbooking has many appealing characteristics.  Some of the most appealing reasons why people start and continue scrapbooking are that scrapbooking allows them to be creative and to do whatever it is that they want in the recording of their own personal memories.  There are no rules!  So to answer the question: "Should your scrapbook be chronological?" the answer is that your scrapbook "should" be whatever you decide that it should be. 

There are of course advantages to keeping your scrapbook chronological.  It is easier to remember most dates and events basically in the order in which they happened.  It can get confusing for you and for the reader of your scrapbook if you are jumping from date to date in your scrapbook.  When you make your scrapbook chronological it is also easier to look back and find the approximate place in your book where an event happened based on what occurred previously or just after that event.  For posterity or genealogical purposes, a chronological scrapbook is useful simply to stay organized.  So obviously there are some advantages to scrapbooking chronologically.  Basically, chronological order keeps you organized.  But do not worry; there are some fun ways to break out of the chronological order and to group together photos of all kinds.

On fun idea for how you can create a scrapbook page that is not completely in chronological order, but still makes sense in your scrapbook, is to group by using other topics or themes.  For example, let’s say that you want to scrapbook your last family vacation.  You can create layouts and spreads that show your family’s vacations for the last several years.  This is beneficial because on a few pages you can enjoy seeing how your family has had a fun time together throughout the years and how you and the children have grown during that time.  Because the theme of the photos is similar, this non-chronological page is not really confusing or out of place. 

Another fun way to throw out the chronological rule book is to use pictures that depict scenes that have taken place at different periods of time when a certain event is particularly monumental or nostalgic.  For example, a fun page layout for a child’s high school graduation could include pictures of that child graduating from kindergarten, attending grade school, and junior high school, and then finally a graduation photo.  In doing this you will have found a fun way not only to look back at past educational accomplishments easily, but a meaningful opportunity to see just how far your child has come and what was required to get to that point.  A purely chronological page layout would simply not be able to illustrate these points. 

Use your creativity to come up with your own ways of combining the chronological with the random.  You may find that as you are looking through photos that crating a mosaic of all kinds of different events might be fun.  Or maybe your concern is to simply get photos in a book and could care less about how they are organized so long as they are recorded and preserved. 

So, whether you decide to make your scrapbook chronological or not is your decision.  Usually it is best to stick to a generally chronological layout simply to keep the project simple for you to keep track of and easier for your future readers to understand.  There are certainly opportunities available for you to break out of the mold of being perfectly chronological but it is usually best to have some reasoning behind your decision to do so if you still want your scrapbook to tell an understandable story of time. 

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Thu 6 Mar 2008 No Comments 

Introduction

While some believe that a scrapbook is simply a series of bound pages with photos, others see scrapbooks as actual books that tell the story of a family, individual or even group of friends.  Scrapbooks can be instrumental in telling the story of one’s life from their own perspective, a biography of sorts.  While for many people scrapbooks are for genealogical purposes, they have a difficult time telling the story of their past.

A scrapbook provides some unique opportunities for expression in a way that traditional photo albums do not.  Perhaps you do not have a lot of confidence in your ability to express yourself on paper.  No worries!  Scrapbooking allows you to use stickers, rub-on phrases, stamps and mementos to tell your story.  To make your scrapbook tell a story all you need is some imagination and the ability to pen down some important dates and facts. 

There are a number of subtle ways that you can turn your scrapbook into a story book.  The first is to create titles for your pages or for a sequence of pages that correspond to each other.  Titles need not be long.  In fact, punch-out letters are easy to find in any craft store or mega mart.  Simply give your series of pictures a category.  When you look back on the page that you just created, you should be able to see at a glance exactly what the page you will be looking at has to do with without even reading a caption or looking at a photo.

Instructions

Telling a story can be particularly challenging if your photos cannot be used to aid you.  Photos can often times tell a story without needing anything more than a date or perhaps a name to accompany them.  Many people simply do not have an eye for taking photos that tell a story.  In this case making a whole book of story-less pictures tell a story is quite the challenge!  You can learn how to take more telling photos by simply keeping the following points in mind: take photos with clear subjects and as many smaller details as possible, make sure that as you are looking through your lens you are capturing a shot that you can add a story to later, and do not be afraid to take candid photos. 

    In order for your photo to tell a story, there needs to be some central idea or focal person in the picture.  Chaos makes for confusing stories.  Try not to make your photo too busy by including as many people as possible doing as many things as possible. Rather, focus on one individual and maybe include some key elements in the background. 

    Talk to yourself while you are taking your pictures.  If you cannot think of a quote or caption for the picture that you are taking, it may not be telling the story that you are hoping to tell. 

    Lastly, candid photos make for some of the most powerful stories.  Candid photos capture the reality that is happening all around us.  A photo of individuals posing or of a group picture, although good for nostalgia, does not leave much to the imagination.  Candid photos capture a moment in time where a story really is unfolding.  Be creative and maybe even encourage others to go on as if you are not there taking their picture.

Conclusion

Making your scrapbook tell a story is not necessarily a difficult thing to do so much as it may be a difficult thing to remember to do. Often times we look at a picture that we recently took and have no problems at all remembering the story behind it.  It is remembering to preserve that story in a more tangible way that will really turn your scrapbook into a story of your life and the lives of those around you. 

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Wed 5 Mar 2008 No Comments 

It is incredibly important to preserve memories through scrapbooking.  Millions upon millions of people have discovered the joys of scrapbooking.  People always scrapbook for a number of different reasons, but many people share the same types of reasons for creating scrapbooks.  If you have been considering taking up scrapbooking, but you just aren’t sure whether or not you want to take the plunge, make sure that you read through these top ten reasons to scrapbook.  There are so many different and so many personal reasons to scrapbook, but here are some reasons that may help convince you that scrapbooking is something that you should do for yourself and for your family and friends so that you can preserve all of these important memories.
Top ten reasons to scrapbook
1.  You will leave behind a legacy
There will be people in the future who will never had had a chance to meet you or any of the members or your family or your friends.  To be honest, you never know what will happen to you, and by making a scrapbook, you will ensure that those to come will know who you are and who your family and friends members are, and will understand your life and what you love.  It is important to know those people who are part of our lives, whether we ever knew them or not.
2.  Show yourself as an individual
A scrapbook is a fantastic way to demonstrate your own life and the lives of your family members and your friends.  We are all curious about how our grandparents or parents looked when they were younger, and we all wonder about what they loved to do and what their personalities were like.  Fulfill the curiosity and interest of those to come by creating scrapbooks that show who you are as an individual, so that you can satisfy those different questions.
3.  Reveal who you really are
A scrapbook is a great way to let people know who you really are and what you really love.  You can use journaling and pictures to demonstrate and to portray your own thoughts, feelings, fears, joys, and more.  A scrapbook, especially the journaling component, is a wonderful way to immortalize who you are and who your family members and friends are.
4.  Pass on beliefs and values
A scrapbook is a great way to make sure that your beliefs and values are passed on.
5.  To help yourself
Putting a scrapbook together during a time in your life where you are unsure of what your life is about and where you want it to go is a great way to decide what your priorities are and what you really care about, and can help you determine your future.
6.  Capture the moment
A scrapbook is a fantastic way to capture not only what happened during the moment, but also how you felt about it.  Include different mementos, but also make sure that you include the journaling element that can help you remember why it was important to you to keep those things and why they meant a lot to you.
7.  A chance to revisit your photographs
A scrapbook gives you the time to look at your photographs and reflect on them.
8.  A creative outlet
A scrapbook is a fantastic creative outlet that can let you really express your creative voice and give outlet to all of those creative juices that have nowhere to go.
9.  Make friends
Scrapbooking is actually a great way to make friends and to connect with people.  Many craft stores have special nights where people come and work on their scrapbooks; scrapbooking is a great way to meet friends, have adult conversations, and more.
10.  Leave a lasting legacy

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Wed 27 Feb 2008 No Comments 

One of the most important components of any great and interesting scrapbook is the journaling.  Scrapbook journaling is the way that you can portray how you felt and still feel about the events that you are recording in your scrapbook.  Without journaling, then your scrapbook is just a whole bunch of different pictures and embellishments without any sort of actual connection to you and your experience during each of those events.

However, one of the problems with scrapbook journaling is that, like so many scrapbooks, it can end up just being really run of the mill and boring without anything interesting.  How hard is it to write "The beach at Hawaii was really pretty" or "we had so much fun this particular Christmas!" or "the girls really liked playing in the swimming pool!"  While all of those statements are true and correspond with your pictures, they don’t tell you anything about how you felt at that particular event and how everybody else felt that Christmas or during your wedding celebrations or while you were in South Carolina visiting your family.

So how can you make your scrapbook journaling more creative?  Well, you can start by looking at your journaling on each of your layouts.  Are you describing the situation?  Just giving a particular description of the beach or the house isn’t really going to tell you a whole lot about your experience when you look back at your scrapbook a few years later.  The problem is that description is really easy, while creative journaling is much more difficult.

So your first step towards more creative scrapbook journaling is to avoid description in your journaling.  What’s your next step?  Start by asking yourself some key questions.  What was the most exciting part of the vacation?  Why did we choose to do things this particular way?  Are there any traditions that are especially important?  What are some unusual and unexpected things that occurred during this particular event? 

If you are creating a scrapbook for each of your kids, then you will want to write down your own feelings about watching them grow up.  Go to your friends and your family members and ask them what their observances are about how you  felt and about the important events of the year.  Then ask them if they would write down some things that they felt were very special and significant, or even some things that they found to be funny and really enjoyable.  Also remember that you don’t just have to write down positive memories and experiences-if you were sad or had a hard time dealing with something, put those emotions in your scrapbook as well.

Get your kids to participate in scrapbooking with you.  Have them draw pictures for their journaling elements if they don’t know how to write.  If they do know how to write, then help them with the spelling, but let them decide exactly what they want to say.

Another great way to make your journaling more creative is to mix up the formats of your journals.  You can create top 10 lists like "Suzy’s Top 10 favorite outfits this year" or "Jack the Cat’s Top 5 Favorite Sleeping Spots" or "Top 10 Restaurants we like to eat at" or something along those lines.  You can also create multiple choice "quizzes" that are easy and obvious, but make your journaling more interactive and funny. 

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Thu 21 Feb 2008 No Comments 

As most of you are probably already aware of scrapbooking is a way for people to preserve history, which history they preserve is up to the individual creating the scrapbook. But with scrapbooking history is preserved in the form of photographs, printed media, and various memorabilia that is all put into an album, which is the actual scrapbook. But what you might not be aware of is that scrapbooking goes back many years, in the past scrapbooking was something similar to storytelling, basically instead of passing down history in the form of an oral story, people used paper and other types of tactile to preserve the memory of the story. In fact people have actually been scrapbooking since printed material became available to the average person.

One of the earliest and most notable scrapbooker in America was Mark Twain, who was actually born under the name Samuel Clemens. As most of you know Mark Twain is the other of some classic American books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But what most of you might not be aware of it was Mark Twain who first created a self-pasting scrapbook. In 1873 he actually received a patent for a self-pasting scrapbook, this item became quite popular and he actually sold over 25,000 copies. Thomas Jefferson was also a very famous scrapbooker, in fact because of the numerous scrapbooks that he kept, we were able to learn a lot about him and his life, including his Presidency, not to mention everything he was involved with before and after he was President.

But perhaps one of the most notable scrapbookers of our time would be Marielen Christensen. In 1976 Marielen began to design creative pages for her family’s photo memories, which when she first began she used sheet protectors to protect the pages and then placed them in a 3 ring binder for storage. By 1980 she had compiled over fifty volumes of family history and was invited to display her albums at the World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City, UT. When she presented her work there was massive interest in what she had done and many people decided to invite her to give seminars and teach classes about what she was doing. Because of the high amount of interest in scrapbooking she decided to open the first scrapbooking store in 1981, Keeping Memories Alive which was headquartered in Spanish Fork, UT.

Another notable scrapbooker in our time would be Marielen’s husband AJ. It was the two of them who opened up the first scrapbook store, but they also published and authored the first how to book on scrapbooking. Because of how fast scrapbooking became popular Marielen and AJ decided to open up a mail order business in the back of their scrapbooking store, which later had to be moved to a larger location. But they also opened up the first wholesale division for scrapbookers. This gave other stores the opportunity to purchase all of their scrapbooking supplies in one convenient location. Not only did Marielen and her husband AJ open a retail store for scrapbooking they were also the first to create a commercial website for scrapbook supply sales.

While there are plenty of other people who have became involved in scrapbooking over the years, especially because of how fast the industry has grown. The people mentioned in this article are probably the most well known for their scrapbooking. Thomas Jefferson actually preferred to write everything down rather than to give public speeches and Mark Twain as we all know is a famous author. But it is thanks to Marielen and her husband AJ that scrapbooking has been made available to everybody in the world.

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As most of you are probably already aware of scrapbooking is a way for people to preserve history, which history they preserve is up to the individual creating the scrapbook. But with scrapbooking history is preserved in the form of photographs, printed media, and various memorabilia that is all put into an album, which is the actual scrapbook. But what you might not be aware of is that scrapbooking goes back many years, in the past scrapbooking was something similar to storytelling, basically instead of passing down history in the form of an oral story, people used paper and other types of tactile to preserve the memory of the story. In fact people have actually been scrapbooking since printed material became available to the average person.

One of the earliest and most notable scrapbooker in America was Mark Twain, who was actually born under the name Samuel Clemens. As most of you know Mark Twain is the other of some classic American books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But what most of you might not be aware of it was Mark Twain who first created a self-pasting scrapbook. In 1873 he actually received a patent for a self-pasting scrapbook, this item became quite popular and he actually sold over 25,000 copies. Thomas Jefferson was also a very famous scrapbooker, in fact because of the numerous scrapbooks that he kept, we were able to learn a lot about him and his life, including his Presidency, not to mention everything he was involved with before and after he was President.

But perhaps one of the most notable scrapbookers of our time would be Marielen Christensen. In 1976 Marielen began to design creative pages for her family’s photo memories, which when she first began she used sheet protectors to protect the pages and then placed them in a 3 ring binder for storage. By 1980 she had compiled over fifty volumes of family history and was invited to display her albums at the World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City, UT. When she presented her work there was massive interest in what she had done and many people decided to invite her to give seminars and teach classes about what she was doing. Because of the high amount of interest in scrapbooking she decided to open the first scrapbooking store in 1981, Keeping Memories Alive which was headquartered in Spanish Fork, UT.

Another notable scrapbooker in our time would be Marielen’s husband AJ. It was the two of them who opened up the first scrapbook store, but they also published and authored the first how to book on scrapbooking. Because of how fast scrapbooking became popular Marielen and AJ decided to open up a mail order business in the back of their scrapbooking store, which later had to be moved to a larger location. But they also opened up the first wholesale division for scrapbookers. This gave other stores the opportunity to purchase all of their scrapbooking supplies in one convenient location. Not only did Marielen and her husband AJ open a retail store for scrapbooking they were also the first to create a commercial website for scrapbook supply sales.

While there are plenty of other people who have became involved in scrapbooking over the years, especially because of how fast the industry has grown. The people mentioned in this article are probably the most well known for their scrapbooking. Thomas Jefferson actually preferred to write everything down rather than to give public speeches and Mark Twain as we all know is a famous author. But it is thanks to Marielen and her husband AJ that scrapbooking has been made available to everybody in the world.

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Tue 18 Sep 2007 No Comments 

Many people think that scrapbooking is simply about pictures and embellishments. What these people don’t realize is that there is more to scrapbooking than just pictures and embellishments, such as layouts and journaling. Journaling is actually rather important in scrapbooking because it allows you to put words to the photo or series of photo. But even if people do journal for scrapbooking some of them find it hard to do because they get a sort of writers block or they think it will take away from the pictures in the page. But the good news is that there is a way to journal more when it comes to scrapbooking.

Difficulty level:
Easy to moderate

Step one:
The first thing that you are going to need to do is to compelte the entire layout and design of your scrapbook page. This is important because then you will know how much space you have for journaling with the layout you have in mind. You can also choose to remove certain things if you feel you need more space for journaling.

Step two:
The next thing that you need to do is to figure out whether you are going to handwrite on the page or if you are going to use a printer or have a family member do it for you. Many people tend to handwrite on the page because it adds to the history and sentiment of the actual page, but if you have bad handwriting or printing you might consider using a printer or another family member to do the journaling for you.

Step three:
Now that you know how and where you are going to put the words on the page you are going to need to start off journaling. The first thing that you should do is to look at the scrapbook page and think about what story it is you are trying to tell.

Step four:
You should actually start off journaling the basics of the scrapbook page. The basics would include people who are in the pictures, ages of the people in the picture, where the picture was taken and any other generic information. By starting off with the basics you are able to loosen up your mind and get over that first mental road block of journaling.

Step five:
The next thing you should do is take a look at the pictures that are on the page and jot down a brief note or two about what was going on when the picture was taken. Some things you might want to jot down is why the picture was taken, such as Cameron rolled over for the first time or something along those lines. You should write this down on a separate piece of paper first and after you have everything figured out you can put it in the scrapbook.

Step six:
Now you want to take a moment to think about what was so important about the photo that it was put in a scrapbook page. If somebody is doing something outrageous, such as standing on their head and acting like a chicken, include a funny line about what made them do it or what they are doing.

Step seven:
But the key thing to journaling more is to just make sure that you include information that helps to expand the memories of the page that you have created and to do it on every page.

Other tips:
 If you have a hard time coming up with things to write in your scrapbook then you can always use quotes from greeting cards that you have cut out.
 You can also use quotes, jokes or sayings from some of your favorite authors or movies that are appropriate for the page.

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Thu 13 Sep 2007 No Comments 

While some people are good at journaling and scrapbooking there are plenty of people out there who love scrapbooking and are good at it but cringe or shudder at the thought of journaling. These people have a mental block when it comes to journaling because they find it so difficult. But the good news is that journaling doesn’t have to be difficult, even the most inexperienced writer can jot down a few notes and find a way to incorporate them into their scrapbooking pages. The best way to go about journaling if you are worried about it is to follow some clever ideas and techniques that were designed to make journaling easier.
 
Here are some clever journaling ideas and techniques.

Idea one:
One of the best journaling techniques that you can use to help you find the right words to put on your scrapbook page is to make a list and the best thing about this technique is that you can use it on any type of page, which means no matter what theme you are doing you can use this technique. What you need to do when making your list is to write down everything that you can think of about the picture and the page itself. For example if you are doing a baby’s birth page you are going to want to include what day they were born, what they were named, how much they weighed at birth, how long they were at birth, the name of the doctor who delivered them, how long mom was in labor for, etc.

Idea two:
Another great idea for a journaling technique that is pretty clever is to ask a question and then leave a space blank for an answer. You can ask open ended questions which will allow the individual person put in what they remembered about the incident. Or you can ask people what answers they would give to the question, such as what is your funniest memory of so and so as a child and include their answers in your scrapbook page, this will also help to give your journaling a more personal feel.

Idea three:
Rather than writing a list you could actually pretend that you are writing a letter to your friend or family member, this technique gives your journaling a more intimate feel then simply listing important facts. When writing the letter you are going to want to include as much detail as you can about the picture, including whom the subject is and what it is that they are doing. You can also include stories about what was going on at the time the picture was taken and what made you decide to take that exact picture and include it in your scrapbook.

Idea four:
Another great idea for journaling is to perform interviews on the people in your family. If you are unable to talk to all of your family members you can ask others in your family about information that pertains to them. But don’t forget to answer the same questions about yourself so that you have the information handy. Once you are done asking questions and taking notes you can refer to your notes to include useful tidbits of information on the various family members in the right places in your scrapbook.

Just remember that when it comes to journaling and scrapbooking there is no right or wrong way to do it. You can even get creative about where you are placing your journaling. Some people who find that they have limited room for journaling simply write around the edges of the pictures, which would be along the borders and other creative things.

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Tue 11 Sep 2007 No Comments 

Scrapbooking as we know it today is a fairly new term.  But in reality, people have been scrapbooking for years.  Girls have saved tickets and photos in albums, parents have saved photos of babies and strands of hair from the first haircuts, and spouses save special love notes and photos of important events such as weddings.  And if you’re one of the many people in the world who love to scrapbook, you have probably spent hours surrounding by memories as you carefully place them into a scrapbook.  You spend time carefully placing the pictures and embellishing the pages.  Since it’s important to you to explain what’s going on in each picture, you incorporate journaling into your scrapbook pages.  But just in case you’ve run out of ideas of how to incorporate journaling on scrapbooking pages, here are some ideas to help you out. 

Scrapbooking experts always say that you should include journaling on your scrapbooking pages.  It adds a touch of yourself to the pages that anyone looking at your scrapbook will enjoy.  It will also help your reader to know who is in each picture, what you were doing, where you were, and what you felt about it.  But if you’re like so many scrapbookers in the world, you may run out of ideas of how to creatively incorporate journaling into your scrapbook pages. So this first idea is a great one for those of us who may want to surprise our viewers with some journaling. 

 Hidden journaling: Use pockets, folded cards, matchbooks, etc to hide your journaling on scrapbook pages.  This way your journaling is on the page, but isn’t seen by someone just flipping through the pages.  Your reader will have to look for the journaling, which is not only enjoyable, but also interesting. 

Next, here’s a way to incorporate your own handwriting into your scrapbooking pages, without the pain of actually writing it yourself:
 Turn your handwriting into a font: Your handwriting will be greatly improved if you are consistent and use even spaces.  This will also allow you to re-size your handwriting to fit each space you want to fill on your page.  For more information on how to turn your handwriting into a font, go to www.fontifier.com 

Here are some other ideas for how to use journaling on each and every scrapbooking page. 

 Start with little things: You can add your journaling to pages in small and sneaky ways.  Start by just writing the date on each page.  Then add a caption under each picture in your own writing.  Then on another page, write the title and then add a little blip under it about the contents of the page.  Or maybe write something silly in one corner of each page.  The possibilities are endless.
 Try just one page: Create a dedication or closing page for your album that has some extensive journaling comments on it.  This page can hold information such as who made the album, the name of the person the album is dedicated to, the dates the album was made, the dates the album includes, the places the album covers, etc.  This is a simple but inspirational way to include extra journaling in a scrapbook.  You can even use your own handwriting to make it more personal. 
 Write your feelings: Your feelings that you have as you create your scrapbook and look over your memories are what makes your scrapbook so special.  Using your own handwriting to write out detailed feelings that are associated with events and people adds a personal twist to your scrapbook that is lost without your own handwriting. 

Whatever you decide to do, using your own handwriting will make your scrapbook more personal and more interesting.  Just remember that your scrapbook doesn’t have to be perfect- it’s yours and yours alone and anything goes.  So good luck and have fun!

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Sat 4 Aug 2007 No Comments 

Scrapbooking is a great way to record your memories in an attractive and interesting way.  It is one of the most popular hobbies of people, especially women, today.  Along with scrapbooking comes the similarly interesting and effective way to record memories: journaling.  If you’re interested in either one of these genres (journaling or scrapbooking), then you may also be interested in learning ways to make your memory books less cheesy, more personal and very memorable.  So here are some tips on ways to do just that.

1.    Include your own handwriting.  One of the best ways to make your journal or scrapbook more personal is to use your own handwriting.  Your handwriting says something about you and adds a different dimension than a computer-printed font.  There are many ways to include your handwriting in a journal or scrapbook.  You can use pockets, folded cards, matchbooks, etc to hide your handwriting on scrapbook pages.  This way your handwriting is on the page, but isn’t seen by someone just flipping through the pages (in case you’re one of the many people who don’t love their own handwriting). 
2.    Write your feelings.  Yes, writing your feelings can sometimes be difficult.  But as you look through your pictures and memorabilia, think about the feelings you have for each person and event.  Use detail to describe what happened.  You may think that this is cheesy, but it isn’t.  Your friends and family who look at your journal or scrapbook will love learning about your feelings.  It will tell them more about you and the great kind of person that you are. 
3.    Avoid too much glitz.  Unless you’re a huge fan of over-embellishment, avoid using excessive embellishment in your journal or scrapbook.  There such a thing as too much of a good thing.  Use embellishments sparingly and only when very appropriate for each page.  If you put too many embellishments on each page, your viewer will become distracted and won’t know where to look first.  You want each page to have a focal point.  Too much glitz can take away from that.
4.    Use appropriate quotes.  Quotes are a great way to express a feeling or describe a moment without having to think of your own words.  They also make your scrapbook more personal and memorable.  They show your creativity.  Yes, there are very cheesy quotes out there.  But if you choose wisely, they can add greatly to your scrapbook or journal. 
5.    Choose the proper paper.  The paper you choose for each page in your scrapbook or journal can dictate the tone of each page.  It can also make your page look cheesy or interesting, depending on your choice.  Be careful of paper that is too busy or silly for the content. 
6.    Include a range of topics.  Your journal or scrapbook will be very memorable and personal if you include pages of friends, home, family, neighbors, etc.  You might enjoy putting a few pages together as follows: a photo of the place your daughter was born, the neighbors you had when you lived there, the family that visited when she was born, and the places you went when she was an infant.  Your daughter and her other siblings may not remember those things (and you may forget over time) but if you record them in your journal or scrapbook you will always have that information with you.
7.    Keep special keepsakes.  Including a ticket to your favorite concert, the bracelet from when your son was born, cards you received for special occasions.all of these things can add depth and personality to your journal or scrapbook.  It’s just up to you to choose which ones!

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Fri 6 Jul 2007 No Comments 

Scrapbooking as we know it today is a fairly new term.  But in reality, people have been scrapbooking for years.  Girls have saved tickets and photos in albums, parents have saved photos of babies and strands of hair from the first haircuts, and spouses save special love notes and photos of important events such as weddings.  And if you’re one of the many people in the world who love to scrapbook, you have probably spent hours surrounding by memories as you carefully place them into a scrapbook.  You spend time carefully placing the pictures and embellishing the pages.  Since it’s important to you to use your own handwriting in your scrapbook, you spend time on each page, trying to include your handwriting.  But just in case you’ve run out of ideas of how to incorporate your handwriting on scrapbooking pages, here are 6 ideas to help you out. 

Scrapbooking experts always say that you should include your handwriting on your scrapbooking pages.  It adds a touch of yourself to the pages that your children’s children will enjoy.  But if you’re like so many scrapbookers in the world, you may not like your own handwriting.  If this is the case, here are the first 2 ideas for how to include your own handwriting.

Posted by Don under Scrapbook Embellishments , Scrapbook Journalling on Sun 1 Jul 2007 No Comments