May is National Scrapbook Month!

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5 Step Process to Successful Scrapbook Pages

Step 1 Decide on your Message or Theme of your picture or pictures.
Choose the Photo or Photo’s you want to use.

It is best to choose only 1 or 2 photos for each page. You will want to focus on your main theme and don’t want it to end up too busy or confusing. Keep with the same message on the photo’s you choose.

Step 2 Choose the Products you want to use.

Choose background colors that coordinate with your photograph and then choose the Stamps and even the scrappin’ kits that Stampin’ Up! has to choose from at this time.

Step 3 Decide on your Layout

Focal Point: Choose the Photograph you want to use as your focal point.
If it isn’t the largest of the 2 or 3 you have chosen, then think about enlarging it and use only 1 or 2.

Your Focal Point is the first thing you want people to see when they see this page. Start with the middle of the page and move it around until it is just right. But don’t attach it to your page just yet.

By the way: Always use Dotto adhesive for your photograph when adhering them to your page. It is archival, removable and acid free. This way, if you need to move it later because it might be better ‘a little to the left’ then it is no problem.

Now that you have your photograph(s) and have an idea where you want it to be on the page, stamp a background on part of your background paper or use some designer paper as accents, or stamp a background on all of it.

Add layers to your photograph now, before attaching it to the background.

Put embellishments on the background that you want to go behind your photograph.

Step 4 Title and Journaling

You know who is in the photograph and you know when you took the picture and you know where it was taken BUT

You are creating a scrapbook that is archival, acid free and will last for generations.

20 years from now, 50 years from now, will everyone looking at your handiwork know who that is in the picture? How old they were when the pictures was taken? When it was taken and where? What they were celebrating: a birthday, a picnic, a family get together?

Try to include the WHO, WHAT, WHEN and WHERE on every page.

I have scrapbooks my grandmother put together back in the early 1900’s but I don’t know who the people are in the pictures and I don’t know exactly when the pictures were taken. It doesn’t matter what ‘day’ but “Summer of 1912” certainly works.

So, in the WHEN part of your journaling, go for a date that gives the future readers an idea of when this event happened.

Also, the journaling my grandmother did was in her own handwriting. Now that she is gone, those pages are cherished even more. It doesn’t matter if you have perfect penmanship or can’t follow a straight line, your future generations will cherish it never-the-less.

Step 5 Accents and Embellishments

The final and fun part of adding buttons, ribbons, brads, and bling that give your page its final touch. You might even want to sign the back to give it that final personal touch.
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