Baby scrapbook

I think baby scrapbooks are probably the most fun to create. As parents, we want to capture absolutely everything and so we snap photos daily of our babies dressed in every outfit and everywhere we go. This gives us hundreds of possibilities in creating our scrapbook.

My suggestion for the first scrapbook is to keep track of your baby’s age and sort the photos according to age.

Your title page could be “The First Twelve Months”. If you create just 2 pages for each month, your scrapbook will have 24 pages of photos plus all the other pages you add.

At the beginning of the album you might want to record some birth information, such as height and weight, name of hospital, name of delivering doctor and date and time of birth. It’s also neat to write how you came to choose the baby’s name. Was the baby named after someone? If so, include a photo of that person.

During those twelve months if you take a photo of the child in the same spot each month, you’ll really be able to see the growth. For example, if the child has a large stuffed animal, put the animal next to the child for each photo. You’ll be amazed at how apparent the child’s growth is.

Something I think is fun is to capture news stories that happened that first month. You can clip headline articles out of the newspaper and copy them onto acid free paper. Capture both local news and world news of what’s happening the day they are brought into this world.

Create a basic family tree for your baby album. If you have photos of you and your spouse, both sets of parents and both sets of grandparents, that is an awesome beginning for your child’s scrapbook.

My kids had to visit the doctor quite often in the beginning. This tapered off as they got older. I always saved the sheets the doctor gave us which recorded their height and weight.

Scrapbooking gifts

Not only is scrapbooking a fun hobby and a great way to save and display your own personal family photos, you’ll find that scrapbooking makes perfect gifts for friends and family. Since scrapbooks are personal items, you may not find them suitable for acquaintances, unless you are creating custom scrapbooks for another person. For example, someone in your work place may ask you to create a scrapbook for someone who is retiring. You’ll be amazed how once people find out about your talent and passion for scrapbooking, that everyone will want one. But in general, you’ll find that creating scrapbook gifts for your parents, siblings, children, and close friends is an excellent gift and one that is greatly appreciated.

One of the fun parts of creating scrapbooking gifts are in gathering resources and research. This is one project that you can’t expect to complete on your own. A close accomplice is essential. You’ll have to brush up on your sleuthing skills and take out your detective cap as you whisk photos away from your intended recipients. With a computer and scanner, you can copy photos without anyone ever noticing and have the perfect images for completing your projects. Be sure to take current photos as well. It’s also a great idea that you always leave some blank scrapbooking pages. This way, your recipient can choose to add several photos of his or her own to the scrapbook. A surprise scrapbook makes an excellent gift for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and retirements.

If you don’t like surprise, or simply feel that it will be too difficult to get the photos that you need without the recipient being aware of your intentions, you may want to let the recipient know that you are planning on creating a scrapbook for them as a gift. This way, they can be included in the planning process and will help choose the photos that they want included. You won’t need to feel uncomfortable about this. People love to receive scrapbooks and it isn’t the element of surprise that makes these gifts special, it is the time and skill that you will invest in the project that makes them endearing. So, make sure that you spend plenty of time beforehand determining if it would be better to keep the gift a surprise, or whether you would like to enlist the services of the recipient. You may find that it is just simpler, easier, and results in a better gift to have the recipient select the content for the scrapbook.

Scrap booking designs

The most important part of the scrap booking is the album, which can be either permanently bound or allowed for insertion of additional pages. There are other types available such as mini albums and accordion-style fold-out albums. Some of these are affixed onto various containers such as matchbooks, CD cases or other small holders.

Modern scrap booking is done mostly on 12"×12" or 8½×11" pages. Recently even smaller albums have become very popular. The most common new formats are 6"×6", 7"x 7", or 8"×8".

Background papers, photo corner mounts; art pens and mounting glues form the basic ingredients of Scrapbooks. More elaborate designs require specialized tools such as die cut templates, rubber stamps, craft punches, eyelet setters, heat embossing tools and personal die cut machines.

Sometimes "embellishments" are used to decorate scrapbook pages. Embellishments include stickers, rub-ons, stamps, eyelet, brads, and chipboard elements in various shapes, alphabet stickers and ribbon. Now sophisticated cutting machines, similar to a printer, are used which can cut any contour or font when connected to a computer.

One of the features of modern scrap booking is the archival quality of the supplies. Designed to preserve photographs and journal clippings in their original state, materials used by most scrap bookers are of a higher quality than those of many typical photo albums commercially available. Scrappers choose only acid-free, lignin-free papers, stamp ink, embossing powder and inks based on pigments that are fade resistant, colorfast and often waterproof. Earlier ‘magnetic’ albums were not acid-free and thus caused damage to the photos and memorabilia inside.

Scrapbooking layouts

Get some photographs that are related, add some special effects like borders, glitter, and explanations and you have a scrapbook. A scrapbook is for preserving memories. New computer technology have turned the art form into a commercial concern. Back in the day people collected photos, added comments and preserved them in an album together with some effects to draw eyes.

Digital scrapbooks have taken over and appears to be the force that is driving the popularity of the art form. With digital cameras everywhere now and simple photo editing software being affordable, it is now possible for every computer user to create their scrapbook with improved layouts.

With the non-computer scrapbook, the producer has to cut, arrange, attach and decorate photos with strips of different colors and writings. With the power of the computer, those functions have gotten much easier and lots faster. One click, backgrounds change, shapes rearrange, and stamps change shapes.

Scrapbook layouts are not only sequences of photos but an impressive and artistic representation of your memories and collection. To make your scrapbook appealing to people who view it, you have to have an overall effect of decoration. Think of the happiness you will achieve as people appreciate your project. Remember this is a sharing of your memories through the scrapbook. There has to be a flow of events and pictures. Although picking every photo can be confusing, you must work beyond that.

Now with the huge hard drives on computers, it is easy to store all your photos. With the help of many available layout ideas, you can organize your collection in numerous sequences. Again one click and you can easily change the album layout.

These days with the growing popularity of scrapbooking, in large part due to digital scrapbooking, there are many options for layouts. The number of websites working to help and guide scrapbookers is increasing every day. Another good thing about these services are that the majority of them offer lots of stuff for free.

Cards scrapbooking

One expectation of artist trading cards is that they should not be sold, but traded or shared. They are usually original works or made in limited editions. This may be one reason why they have gained such popularity with today's scrapbookers. They are a perfect item for scrapbooking swaps. Online message boards have special sections just for swaps. One scrapbooker usually organizes the swaps and then opens it up for others to participate. Each member of the swap creates an ATC and then makes enough for each member in the group. They sign their name, contact information, title of the ATC, and the number of the card if it is part of an edition. At the end of the swap, everyone has a collection of different artist trading cards.

Swaps and limited editions are often created around themes. Some popular artist trading card themes are animals, seasons, quotes and holidays. In some cases, the theme may be defined by the medium used. For example, you may have a digital media theme or a collage theme. In fact almost any theme used for scrapbooking circle journals could be used for an ATC swap as well. Creating an artist trading card follows the same design principles as a scrapbooking page, only on a smaller scale. You will need a focal point, background and an embellishment or two. Arrange your card first, and then adhere it to the card. Remember to sign the back.

Once you have a collection of artist trading cards, you will want to store them or display them. You can easily store them in the plastic sleeves meant for sports trading cards. A small decorative box also makes a good container, especially if it is archival safe. You may want to purchase an ATC holder to display your cards. These specially designed holders look like a rolodex. They are available from a few manufacturers and can be found in either a vertical or horizontal format.

Artist trading cards are only limited by your imagination. They are a perfect opportunity to try a new scrapbooking technique on a small scale. Gather a few scrapbooking friends and start an artist trading card swap today.

Digital designs scrapbooking

What is digital scrapbooking? Well, it is basically taking the art of scrapbooking onto your computer! There are many things you can’t do in traditional scrapbooks that are available to you as a digital scrapbooker.

One of the things you can do is create your own scrapbook paper. Take any image and turn it into your own patterned paper. You can make your papers any colors you want to match the photos for your specific layouts!

You can also do some amazing things with your photos when you scrap digitally. I had a friend create her background paper out of a photo and layer another photo on top of it. It was amazing! You can add words and phrases onto your photos, color tint black and white photos, enlarge photos or turn your photos into cartoon drawings, depending on the software.

My personal preference for photo editing software is Adobe Photoshop Elements. You can make pages any size you want, use fun text effects and add lots of texture styles. Did you know you can take a rectangular block of color, add dots, layer on texture and it can look like polka dot grosgrain ribbon?? Photoshop Elements does have a definite learning curve and isn’t intuitive like Microsoft Word, but once you play with it for a few times, it will get easier.

Now, playing with page effects on Photoshop Elements is fun for do-it-yourselfers, digital scrapbooking stores take all the hard work out of digital pages. Plus, the people who design the products are much more capable of making something that looks exactly the way it should. There is something to be said for the amount of time it saves by just buying a product. And you don’t even have to wait for the item to ship. You just pay and download for almost instant access!

At many online stores, you can download any number of products and print them for your own pages. They have everything from fonts to cut outs and everything in between! You should see the amazing digital metal tags! They look so realistic!

Scrapbooking paper designs

Manual scrapbooking is dependent of a variety of papers. Patterned paper, vellum color paper or specialty paper are amongst the favorites of scrapbooking pundits. There different forms of paper will help you make your scrapbook beautiful and easy.

Sharon Ann (http://www.scrapbookingsuppliesonline.com) has literally hundreds of types of scrapbooking paper. For instance they have scrapbook paper for each gender of babies. Baby boys and baby girls each get their own scrapbook paper. They also have several piece cuts to enter the first twelve months of their lives. They also carry numerous borders and designs that will make your memories exciting.

Basic prints in paper include double sided patriotic papers, one color, dot, stripes, plaid, gingham etc. They come in many excellent colors. Babyline papers help you design your scrapbook layout. Their lines of printed vellums and textured card stock will make your project more eye-catching.

Images can also be enhanced with patriotic patterns. The choices include stars, alphabetic cord stocks and red and blue stars. These patterns are place on vellum and are an ideal background for pictures and clippings. Using navy gangham and stars on vellum provides an effective background for all your outdoor photographs.

His story, a rugged texture design paper consists of various patterns such as giant gingham, brushed, turtle shell, blue marbled etc. Two colors that can lend a striking background that will suit all your outdoor photos are sand stone and water color sand stone.

Another online location for scrapbooking paper is one of the best sites on the internet. Paper Addict has more than five thousand varieties of paper. The variety grows with each passing day. One of the papers they feature is the Ancestry collection. This collection includes a wide range of papers. They are excellent to store family photos and pictures. They also have an Ancestry family history book that contains 38 pages of different types of soft papers for use with the family history scrapbook. The book also contains excellent scrapbook layout ideas.