Cropping
Sometimes, you may find it necessary to crop your photos. There is nothing wrong with this but be careful not to crop them all. If you want a focus photo or if a photo has a terrible background, then if should be cropped. However, if you crop too much, not only are you making smaller photos which are harder on the eye, you are taking a lot of history out of your photos that future generations may like to see.
Free fonts
When journalling on your pages, you may want different fonts - whether it's for your title only, or all of your journalling. Finding the necessary font can really improve the look of your layout.
Sometimes you can't find the font you want on your word processor or publisher. There are heaps of sites available to download fonts - either for free or paid for.
Focus Points
When doing a layout, it is a good idea to have a focus point which shows the meaning for the page. This should be where the person looking sees first. This could be a larger photo, a distinctive title, or a difference from the rest of the page, such as a matted photo or one black and white photo with the rest color.
Expressions Layouts
Parents like to keep photos of the different expressions their children make. A good way of scrapbooking this is to do an "expressions" page. You can either take posed photos, candid ones, or a mixture of both. Try to get happy, sad, angry, excited, scared and angelic. These pages are fun to do and yourself and others will enjoy looking at them for a long time.
Journaling Tips
Journaling can be quite difficult at times. You may feel that you are just repeating yourself page after page. Here are some tips to help.
Pre-plan. When you carry your camera, carry a small notebook. As you take the photos, jot down your thoughts about the event.
Include the who, what, when, where, and why of your subject.
Try to capture emotions.
Selecting paper suitable for scrapbooking
When selecting the paper you will use, try to match it with your theme. If you are doing a particular themed album - such as heritage or wedding - you may like to have the same papers throughout your album. If you are doing a chronological album it doesn’t really matter.
You can use just one piece of paper per page or you can piece together various papers to create a different effect. This can be done by using different colored plain papers, printed papers, textured papers, or a mixture of them all.
If you want to matt your photos you usually do it in one or more different colors to your base paper. You can either do it with plain paper or printed paper.
Types of scrapbooking albums
Most people use chronological albums, but there are other types of albums to use for a special event or theme.
Chronological albums start at the beginning of a theme (such as a baby’s birth), and continues as long as required.
Special theme albums document one certain theme - Christmas, birthdays, vacations, sports, school, etc.
Heritage albums contain the family history. It can be your current photos for future generations to enjoy, or it can be your old photos documenting your past family heritage.
ABC albums are used as a learning tool for your child. Each page stars your child around a certain letter - for example your child could be eating an apple for “A” and bouncing a ball for “B” etc. These albums can also be done for colors or shapes.
Where to start
When you start scrapbooking, start by organizing your photos into themes, seasons, year, or event. It is a good idea as you are sorting to write down memories that you have about the photo such as names, dates, and places. If you want to write on the back of your photos, it is important to use an acid-free pen.
When making your first page you should choose an event that you have a few good photos from. It is probably best to choose photos that are not necessarily “special” to you. You should save baby books, wedding photos, and anything else that you really treasure until you have developed a knowledge of what you like in your pages and the skills to make your album as precious to you as the memories are.
What is ScrapBooking?
Scrapbooking is the creative hobby of combining photos, memorabilia, and stories (known as journaling) into a scrapbook. All you need to get started are some photos that need sorting into albums and a willingness to be creative with the many materials and techniques used to create your scrapbooking pages.
The purpose of scrap booking is to record our memories and experiences to share with family and friends now and in the future. A scrapbook is simply a decorated photo album. Scrapbooks are great as baby albums, wedding albums, or heritage and family albums. They make wonderful gifts for parents, grandparents or friends.
