Advice and Tips for the Beginner Scrapbooker Part 3: Preserving Your Memories

Once you have decided on the theme and photos you would like to scrapbook, the next step is making those images the focus on your page, after all isn’t that the what you are trying to do? What I mean by making you photo the focus of the page is use embellishments (stickers, die-cuts, ribbons, even busy papers) to highlight your photo, not take over the focus of the page. Personally I am a very simple scrapbooker, my pages have few embellishments, that's my “style” you could say. Now there are some who like using lots of embellishments and that’s okay too, everyone has their own style and after you do a few pages you will discover yours, just keep in mind what the focus of your page is.













The Basic Tools You Need to Begin Your Scrapbook Projects

- Organization box
- Album- Album Pages
- Page Protectors
- Photo safe adhesive
- Photo trimmer (Straight cutter, corner maker, scissors)
- Photo safe pen for Journaling


Now that your photos are organized, next you need to decide which ones are going where on the page. Planning out your page before you stick anything down permanently can help you avoid headaches down the road. Planning includes deciding which photos you are going to use, which papers best suite those photos, and which photos you need to crop to get the best impact of your page design. If you are stuck for a layout idea there are many websites, books and magazines that help to inspire you, just be careful that they don’t overwhelm you too much. Another great way to get ideas for your pages is by joining a scrapbook group or getting together with friends who enjoy this hobby and work together on your projects. Sometimes you just need that sounding board that another person can provide.

Helpful Hint: When choosing paper for your page, choose colours that will enhance your photo (make them pop!), not take the focus away from them.

Cropping your photos can be a useful way of highlighting the focus of the portrait. I remember the first time someone told me to crop my photos. I thought they were nuts! I mean the very idea of cutting up your precious photos! (This is another very good reason why you should work with copies of your photos and not the originals). I soon discovered that cropping a photo can make a dramatic impact. By cropping you can take out the “noise” or unwanted objects in a photo and leave only that what you want to display.

Okay, so you’ve got your photos on your page, accented with embellishments to highlight your photos, but you still have another very important thing to do. What could that be you ask? Journaling. I know there are some of us (myself included) that don’t particularly jump at this but it is so important to do. Journaling allows you to tell the story behind the photos you so carefully took the time to display in your album. Journaling can be very basic from simply the date (month, year), location (Picnic at Niagara-on-the-Lake), to what is actually going on in the photo. Having a photo of people acting silly in the living room may not mean much to a future generation but if you write a little blurb stating that the family is practising the Gay Gordon for the daughters upcoming wedding and had a goofy good time at doing it, well that tells you a little more then what you see in the photo itself. Also including the names of the people in the photo is very important. How many of us have a heritage photo of a “family member” but no one seems to know who it is? Yup, I’ve got a few of those too. Wouldn’t it be nice to know who that person was? Well, now you can help avoid this problem for future generations by simply including the individual’s names in your journaling.

If you are concerned about making spelling mistakes you could always type your journaling on the computer and use a spell check program to help avoid mistakes. I do this often myself because even though I have two university degrees and am working on the next, my spelling and grammar are terrible at times. I personally prefer to hand write my journaling so I keep my laptop beside me while I work and use it as my dictionary to check the spelling on certain words before I write them down. And heck, if I make a mistake it just makes my album more uniquely mine and shows to others I am not perfect and spelling is not my forte.

The very last step you need to do is protect your work. You put so much time and energy into your project it would be a shame to have it ruined by a toddlers sticky fingers or someone spilling something on it. To protect your pages use page protectors. Some albums (the kind where you slide your page into a sleeve) you do not need to purchase extra page protectors because the sleeve already does the protecting. But for those who purchased albums where you have pages with no protections I would strongly encourage you to make this simple investment to preserve your memories.

Please remember one thing, scrapbooks can either be decorative or plain, whatever format you choose is absolutely fine. It’s your album, make it yours by doing it your way and don’t let anyone tell you different.

Advice and Tips for the Beginner Scrapbooker Part 2: Where to Put My Memories

You have your photos and memorabilia all organized, now you are ready for the next step, deciding which product to use to display your memories. You will soon discover that there are many products and companies out there selling scrapbook materials. The key thing to remember when making your selections is to use products that are acid free, lignin free and photo safe. Let me explain what I mean here.

Acid , as it applies to papermaking, is a water-soluble compound that can be present in paper as a result of the papermaking process. In the presence of moisture, acid may cause paper to degrade.

Lignin is a brown organic substance that binds to cellulose fibres and hardens and strengthens the cell walls of plants. Lignin is the chief non-carbohydrate constituent of wood and is also a major contributor to the chemical degradation of paper. As it deteriorates, lignin gives off acids that cause paper to become brittle and to discolour on exposure to heat and light.

Photo safe is another term tossed around freely in this industry. It implies that the product will not harm your photos. Interesting fact, the scrapbooking industry is not regulated and therefore it can be difficult to determine which products are truly photo safe as companies can label their products to be misleading. Simply having a package product that states its photo safe does not mean the company met the required standards. For a product to be truly photo safe it must meet the international standard requirement ISO 18902 and say so on the packaging.

(Acid and lignin definitions taken from: HP @, http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?
docname=c00740449&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=&product=62997)

Advice and Tips for the Beginner Scrapbooker Part 1: The First Step

You’ve heard about scrapbooking, probably even have a friend, relative or colleague who does it, now you’re interested in starting it yourself. Scrapbooking is a great way of preserving memories and telling your stories for future generations to enjoy. The Big question you have is, “Where do I start?” I would like to share with you some handy tips and advice that may help clear the fog and help you on your journey into a wonderful hobby.

Many years ago I became interested in scrapbooking but like many I didn’t know where to start. I visited a local scrapbook supply store hoping to find my answers. I walked in and instead of finding solutions I became completely overwhelmed with all the different choices of papers, stickers, embellishments and more! I only lasted a few minutes in the store before I had to leave and catch my breath. I still felt helpless in knowing how to start my own album, but after some time (and a few mistakes along the way) I finally figured it out.


First you need to gather your photos and other memorabilia that you would like to preserve in an album. So go and gather them up from the boxes under your bed or in the closet, to the memorabilia tucked away in your desk and cupboard drawers. Once you’ve gathered your items up you may find you have a big pile of things on your table. Now don’t despair or give up. The next step you need to do is organize your photos and memorabilia. I personally feel this is the most important step in any project, by taking the time to organize your photos you will save time later in your creative process. You can organize your photos by date (year), person (Grandma G.), event (Family BBQ), and so on. Now do take care as to where you store your photos and memorabilia. Use products that are photo safe and won’t damage your photos.

I strongly discourage using photos in your scapbook albums that you do not have additional copies of. This can either be another copy of the photo or the negatives. If you have photos where there are no negatives or copies (such as heritage photos) I encourage you to scan or reprint them. If you scan your heritage photos not only do you now have the means to make additional copies but you also have the ability to touch up these photos using photo software and archiving them by burning the images onto an archival cd. By creating a cd you now have the means of sharing these rare and one of a kind photos with family and you are ensuring that these images will be preserved.

A Happy Sad Little Christmas

This past Christmas was filled with mixed emotions. It was an exciting time in my house as my two little munchkins were delighted with the colourful wrapped packages under the tree. However, this was also a sad Christmas for me as it’s the first Christmas in 26 years that I wasn’t able to spend it with Mrs. Camp. My dear friend Mrs. Camp, who introduced me to the Beacon Hill dollhouse and many other of my favourite Christmas traditions, had passed away. I know she has gone to a better place but I am disappointed in myself that I wasn’t able to show her my finished dollhouse. When I finally do finish my dollhouse I hope she’ll be able to see it in spirit.

To Light, or Not to Light, That is the Question!

I think one of the biggest reasons I had not continued work on my dollhouse was because of the stage it was in. It is in a stage that if I wanted to wire it for electrical lights, now would be the time to do it. But do I want to have lights in my house? Oh, I can’t decide. If I did go for electricity then there is the cost of the wiring and the cost of the fixtures. And I unfortunately take after my mother and always fall in love with the expensive pieces. So, it would seem friendlier on my wallet to not wire my dollhouse for lights. Then I could continue on working on my dollhouse. But I still have a desire to have electrical lights and this desire, I feel, will always pop up. So I have been in a conflict over this for a number of years.

Well I’ve made my decision. I am going to wire my house for electrical lights. I’ve just decided that I don’t need to put fixtures in right away. That way I can save for the fixtures I really like but I can also continue on with working on my dollhouse.

Wish me luck! I’ve decide to go with the tape method. Not sure how to do it. I’m thinking of buying the instructional DVD from Cir-Kit. I figure if I can manage to decipher the assembly instructions provided by Greenleaf then I can do anything.

Christmas Traditions Scrapbook

One of the most difficult things my husband and I encountered as a newly married couple was combining our family traditions and making our own. Christmas was the holiday that proved most difficult for us at first. You see I grew up celebrating Christmas a very European way and my husband grew up celebrating Christmas a very North American way. Needless to say neither of us wanted to budge on giving up any of our traditional ways because we had always done it that way. ☺

Well as you grow as a couple, mature and try to put your stubbornness aside one can realize that making new traditions can be just as important as celebrating old ones. For me that means advent calendars, lebkuchen, St. Nicolas Day, Advent wreaths, cutting down the Christmas tree, visiting Mrs. Camp (because it’s tradition don’t you know), working like crazy in the bake shop on the 24th, mom’s potato salad and opening presents on Christmas Eve and sleeping in on Christmas morning. That’s Christmas for me. All these point bring back fond memories and feelings when I think about them. In part, they are what shaped me to love the holidays so much. For my husband Christmas memories are slightly different. They include pulling out the same artificial tree every year and piecing it together, waking up really early on Christmas morning, stockings, opening presents and visiting grandparents. As you can see our traditions are very different but are important to both of us.

This entire process made me come up with the idea of creating a scrapbook dedicated to the Christmas traditions we grew up with. Now that we are married and have children we have merged our two family traditions and created some of our own. Everyone celebrates the holidays differently but they are special to us no matter what. Now there is another way of celebrating those traditions. Create a scrapbook with pictures and stories of family traditions and how they started. What a great keepsake for future family members!

Some ideas of what you might include in your Christmas Traditions Scrapbook may include:
- Visits – is there a certain individual you make a special Christmas visit to? For me it’s Mrs. Camp. I’ve been visiting her on Christmas Eve day since the age of 4 and have continued that tradition for all these years.

- Baking – Christmas seems to be the time of year that even those individuals who don’t bake another time of the year pull out the flour and bake. Lots of us have those certain holiday favourites or tradional recipes that we bake every year. Christ Stollen is one of ours. Tell the story behind the recipe, how did the tradition start? Who started it?

- Cutting down the Tree - Now not all of us cut down a Christmas tree. Many use artificial trees. But there is always a story there. Celebrate it, preserve it. Let future generations know how much you enjoyed whatever tradition your family does.

- Decorating the Tree – Is there a special ornament that always has a place of honour on your tree? Take a picture of it and write the story/ history of the ornament. It could be a family heirloom or one your child made for you at school. Tell just how special it means to you and/ or your family.

- Christmas cards - Do you have special Christmas cards or letters (a child’s letter to Santa) that are precious to you? Why not celebrate them and preserve them in a very unique way. Placing them in an album not only showcases the memory but also preserves them for future generations to also enjoy.

No matter what your traditions are or how you celebrate them they are important because they are important to you. Celebrate them and showcase them in a special way that many individuals can enjoy with you. Happy Scrapping!

Scrapbooking Your Pregnancy

What a unique way to preserve the joyous event of being pregnant. Preserve these precious memories in the form of a scrapbook. You may decide to do an independent pregnancy album or combine this within your baby album.

Ideas that you may decide to include in your album:

- Journal your thoughts and emotions when trying to become pregnant.
- Journal your thoughts and emotions when you found out you were pregnant.
- Take a picture of your positive pregnancy test.
- Write down the names you debated on.
- Ultra sound pictures.
- Date you felt the first flutter or movement.
- Pregnancy symptoms.
- Food cravings.
- Dreams of baby.
- Take pictures of your profile each month and watch as your belly grows.
- Photos of nursery, under construction and completed are always fun.
- Baby showers.

Another thing you might consider doing is asking your health care provider if you can get a photo copy of your records to include in your album so you can see your weight gain and the baby’s heart rate.

Are you/ did you keep a journal during your pregnancy? Include these pages in your album to create a truly special memory keepsake.

Most importantly, there is no right or wrong way to go about doing this album. However you decide to create your pages is perfect. Have fun; this is your album, do it your way! Enjoy!