Scrapbooks to Cherish
Main Description
Create a collection of your favorite memories now and your family can treasure it for years.
First, find an album with acid-free pages. Otherwise, the acid present in certain papers will cause it to break down, eventually leading to deterioration of your photos. Many scrapbooks also allow you to write your impressions, adding details and insight to your memories. We recommend using 3-ring binders with 81/2" x 11" sheets. That way you can add and remove pages whenever you wish. And while you're at it, you will also want to pick up some photo adhesives (permanent, temporary, or photo corners for your most precious pictures), a pair of sharp scissors and a good black pen.
Materials Content
Scrapbooks combine photos, mementos and notes about an event to create a distinctive mood. Before you begin, it's best to organize your photos around a theme, whether it's holidays, weddings, vacations, birthdays or family reunions. Organizing in this manner helps you build your scrapbook collection fairly rapidly, since each page is designed to build continuity rather than tell an entire story. Theme books are easy and enjoyable to look at and show how children grow and styles change over the years. And since you'll be using many of the same accents such as background paper colors, you'll realize cost savings as well.
Instructions Content
Start with a simple yet bold cover page for each year or event, consisting of a single photo along with the date and location. Designing all your cover pages in the same style helps to establish continuity throughout your scrapbook.
Once you've selected your favorite photos, you're now ready to crop and mount them. Cropping a photo merely involves cutting off the boring, messy or distracting parts of a photo. Cropping the wasted space away improves the page composition while also providing added room for additional photos and journaling.
Select three to five photos you'd like to use and place them on your blank page. Photos generally look best with straight sides and clean edges, but an oval or circular shape can also work well.
You can also cut along the edges of an object or person and remove the background altogether. Another option is to cut a portion of the object out while leaving the rest of the photo intact, resulting in a jack-in-the-box effect.
Since you want your scrapbook to look its best, make sure to use sharp scissors to crop your photos. Another option is to use a small, inexpensive paper cutter, which will help immeasurably in achieving perfect right-angle cuts.
Before adding some decorating and journaling/titles, try a couple of practice sketches on a side sheet of paper. Remember, relax and have fun with it.
Extended Editorial Content
Tweaking Your Layout
As you and your family work with your photos, seeing new connections and themes, you may get numerous ideas about how all your elements should be put together. Since layout is crucial, don't be afraid to lay out everything on a practice sheet before committing to your design. If you're not comfortable using your own handwriting, try writing your titles with computer fonts, printing them out on paper, and tracing them onto your scrapbook page, using a light table for a professional handwritten feel. You might also try using sticker letters, too.
While there are all sorts of special glues available, we recommend inexpensive, acid-free glue sticks, which contain no water and won't cause your paper to buckle. And whatever you do, do not use rubber cement – it turns brown as it ages.
Protecting Your Book
Once you're finished, it's a good idea to slide your scrapbook pages into page protectors, which protect the various cut papers and attached photos while reducing the amount of glue necessary to hold everything together. Then, when you're completely done, be sure to store the entire scrapbook flat on its back, preferably in an airtight container. You may want to also store the supplies you used for creating your scrapbook in a
Ziploc® Brand Storage Bag with the Smart Zip® Seal or in a
Ziploc® Brand Container with the Smart Snap® Seal . Then, when you're ready to add on to your scrapbook, everything you need for adding to your scrapbook will be in one handy place.