Scrapbooking With LauraJune 21, 2018 |
Hey, StickerKitten fans! It’s Laura here today and I’m going to chat a little bit about scrapbooking and using sketches to start your creativity off.
Scrapbooking is my thing. I see the papers and embellishments and feel the creativity. I often start off with a head full of ideas, full on mojo! But what about when you don’t know where to start? What about if you new to this scrapping lark? Maybe you are a card maker… perfectly comfortable with cards but unsure about scrapbooking. Well, can I suggest using a sketch to get you started?
All you need is:
a photo. It can have a story attached to it… that Christmas day when you got a bike; when your brother won the Easter bonnet parade; a wedding; the cute face that the little one made when they tried ice cream for the first time. Photos that you want the big story to be recorded. Or you can choose a photo with no particular story, no big deal but you just love it.
some supplies. I’m guessing as you are here you have some StickerKitten goodies amongst your stash? These will be perfect. You can also throw in ANY craft supplies you have… papers, stamps, ribbons, buttons, threads. Also keep an eye out for magazine pages, mailshots, packaging that can be repurposed, clothes tags, those ribbon hanging loops that come in your new pyjama trousers that no one ever uses!
a base to work on. You can get purpose made pre-bound scrapbooks or go loose leaf and keep your pages in page protectors and binders. You can scrap or memory keep in a notebook too, whatever takes your fancy. Size-wise 12×12 is the standard. A4 (or 8.5 x 11 or 9 x 12) is perhaps a more affordable option as you can easily find cheap binders in stationery stores. But really there are no rules.
some essentials. Glue, tape, pen, scissors, maybe a ruler if you want to be precise and a paper trimmer if very straight lines are your jam.
So you’ve got all that – now what? Well, Pinterest is your friend… but also your enemy! I can easily lose an hour browsing on Pinterest! It’s good to get some ideas but make sure you are not spending your precious creating time trawling through other people’s creations. A search for Scrapbook Sketches will throw up thousands of ‘maps’ that you can base your layout on.
Sketches will generally indicate where to put the photo, where to add some mixed media, where to put your ephemera and embellishments. You can follow them exactly or just use them as a jump start to get you going. You can faithfully replicate every star with a star or change it up and switch the stars on the sketch for flowers (or unicorns or dinosaurs!) Try rotating the sketch 90 degrees if your photo is landscape and the sketch illustrates a portrait photo.
If someone in the photo is looking sideways I tend to place the photo so they are looking towards the middle of the layout rather than staring off the layout – if this conflicts with the sketch flip it.
Don’t feel restricted by the sketch or layouts from other people. The idea is that they give you a starting point. For this layout, I rotated the sketch and switched out squares and hexagons for rectangles and eggs!
I think my best advice for a beginner is to just get started. I held back for ages as I was ‘scared’ I would do it wrong – you can’t do it wrong! Just play and go with the flow.
Happy crafting!