Scrapbooking Toddler Memories by Rachel Paxton

Toddlers give us many opportunities to take great photographs for scrapbooking. I’ve listed some activities you can do with your toddler that will give you a chance to take some wonderful pictures that will last a lifetime. If you haven’t gotten out much lately, use these ideas to spark your imagination and have some fun with your little ones!

- Haircuts
- Swimming lessons
- Throwing rocks in the river
- Christmas, Easter
- 4th of July, family reunions
- Riding tricycle
- Flying a kite
- Blowing bubbles
- Playing in sandbox
- Playing at playground
- Picnics
- Playing in the sprinklers
- Fingerpainting
- Birthday parties
- Helping dad
- Camping
- Going to the zoo
- Visiting grandparents or great-grandparents
- Eating popsicles
- Playing with pets

Remember to always take more pictures than you think you’ll need and invest in a large memory card for your digital camera (they’re cheap). When trying to capture photos of my toddlers I’ve found that only half of my pictures turn out because the boys move so fast! You can always delete the ones you don’t want later. Have fun picture taking…you’ll get some of your best candid shots at this age.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Basic Color Theory Scrapbooking Ideas

author: Jay Moncliff

     Remember the color wheel? Colors arranged in a circle, similar to a rainbow, and all of the colors related? Red combines with yellow to make orange, yellow and blue combine to make green, and red and blue make purple, remember? Visit your local craft store and invest in a simple color wheel to get you going. Most of the art departments will have one, and EK Success now makes a fancy one just for scrapbooking. Any color wheel will allow you to use these simple ideas.

Let your picture be your guide in choosing a color scheme for your page. Choose one color from the photograph to be your “key” color. It may be a color from a flower in the foreground, or the color of the shirt your child is wearing. Whatever you choose, it will be the starting point for your color themed page design.

    The first color scheme is monochromatic. Say you’ve chosen the blue of your son’s eyes. Since every color comes in many values, choose two or three additional values of the blue color you want to use. You may choose one lighter value and one darker value, or two lighter or darker values, it’s up to you. Now do all of your work on the page in these three colors. The result will be restful, calming and cohesive. Your page will be pleasing to the eye and stylish, no matter how you accessorize.

The basics of color theory that we learned in grade school are worth reviewing when you’re looking for ideas to get started on your next scrapbook page. Invest in a color wheel and put those great papers to work for you!

Jay Moncliff is the founder of http://www.scrapbookingcenter.info a website specialized on Scrapbooking, resources and articles. This site provides updated information on Scrapbooking. For more info on Scrapbooking visit: http://www.scrapbookingcenter.info

Scrapbooking Graduation Memories by Rachel Paxton

It’s hard to believe that my daughter has just graduated from high school. She has some great memories of this event for us to preserve in a graduation scrapbook.

We decided to purchase a ready-made scrapbook instead of assembling one. At a local bookstore we found a large spiral bound scrapbook/journal on clearance for $2.99!

My daughter was not able to get her senior yearbook before graduation, so she had her friends write notes to her in her scrapbook. She took the book with her to her senior class party, then we set the book out at her family graduation party for friends and family to sign.

We had many photo taking opportunities over the weekend. We have pictures from the graduation ceremony, from her senior class party, and from her family party to put in her scrapbook. I will mat one of her senior portraits on the front of the scrapbook.

There are other mementos you can preserve in a graduation scrapbook. Here are some ideas to get you started:

- Cards from family and friends
- Program from graduation ceremony
- Newspaper clippings
- Report cards
- Achievement and/or award certificates
- Senior party mementos

I will finish off the scrapbook with graduation stickers from a local craft store.

A graduation scrapbook does not have to be a work of art. The important thing is to preserve the memories of your graduate’s big day.

This would be a great project to do with your teen. If they would like to tackle the project themselves, give them all the supplies and let them unleash their creativity. My daughter loves the finished project, but is not much interested in scrapbooking, so she is more than happy to let me do it for her.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Scrapbook Brads

To apply your brads you will need a craft knife or eyelet hole punch and a self-healing mat. Place your paper onto the mat and make a slight slit or punch where you want the brad to be placed. Poke the prongs of the brad through the hole with the decorative head on the front of the paper. Turn the paper over and bend each prong flat to the back of the paper.

Some ideas for using brads:

attaching vellum

use as dots for background

attach moving parts (clock hands, legs on people or animals)

attaching transparencies

hinges

period at the end of a sentence

bullets for a journal list

center of flower

the center of a letter in the alphabet

nails in a board

stones on a ring

buttons on a snowman

dots on ladybug

stars for a night background

snowflakes for winter

blue as raindrop background

chocolate chips on a cookie

buttons on a shirt or coat

dots on Easter eggs

lights on vehicles

Christmas tree balls

eyes on paper dolls or animals

sprinkles on a sundae, cake or cupcakes

M & M’s

Snow Fun Scrapbook Layout by Rachel Paxton

Playing in the snow is a great time to take candid pictures of your family.  Where we live we might only get one or two days of snow each year, if we’re lucky, so this year we decided to drive to the snow!  We found a state park only a couple of hours away where they had great sledding hills, and took the whole family along for an afternoon of sledding and snow fun.

We took lots of great pictures that day.  It’s not often you get pictures of grandma and grandpa sledding and playing in the snow. The hard part is choosing which pictures to put in my scrapbook!

Materials Needed:

Dark blue piece of 12×12 scrapbook paper
White piece of 12×12 scrapbook paper
Paper Cutter
Glue
Two photos

I was trying to come up with a “snow” theme for my scrapbook layout.  I chose a 12×12 dark blue piece of paper for the background of my page.  I decided to accent the blue with lots of white to represent the snow.

For the first white accent I decided to create snowflakes to be the mats for my photos.  There was only enough room for two photos on the page, so I cut out two snowflake mats.

To make the snowflake mats, I cut out a piece of white cardstock to be the size my mat would normally be.  Then I folded the piece of paper in half as many times as I could and cut the corners off and cut little triangles into each side of the shape to create my snowflake.  You can have fun with this part, just think back to making snowflakes as a child! I also cut out a couple of small snowflakes for extra decoration.

To add some snow to the background of my page, I took a 12×12 piece of white card stock and tore a strip of it to glue at the bottom of the dark blue background page.  This gives the page the appearance of a snowy background (see photo).

Next I cut out a freehand snowman to glue on the side of the page.  It really doesn’t have to look perfect, it’s supposed to look homemade!

I then printed out the words “Winter Wonderland” on my computer to create the heading for the page.  I didn’t mat this piece of paper.  I just cut it out and glued it at the top of the background page.

Last but not least, I glued two photos to my “snowflake” mats and arranged them in the center of the page with the extra snowflake for an added accent. Easy, and very cute!

Photos of finished snow fun scrapbook layout:
http://www.crafty-moms.com/scrapbooking/snow-fun.shtml

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Paper Piecing

Paper piecing is the art of placing pieces of paper together to make shapes, animals, and scenes. There are many places to find patterns. You can make your own, copy from a children’s coloring book, buy a paper piecing book or the most popular…download from free online sites. Good patterns will have dark lines and definite areas of different color pieces. Beginners should look for designs with large pieces not a lot of small intricate pieces.

You will simply trace the pieces or print them directly onto the cardstock. If you are going to get patterns from the web and use them more than once, I suggest printing them on good cardstock. You will then cut out the shapes in the colors of your choice. Place them into the desired shape as directed on the pattern and adhere. One of the great things about making your own paper piecings is you can change the colors to match your pictures and layout. If you buy pre-made embellishments you are stuck with the colors offered.

Below are links to some great free paper piecing websites. I would love to see any of your finished layouts. Please try to remember where you got the pattern from so we can give appropriate credit.

Free Patterns:

Disney Castle
Great Moments
The Quilted Snail
Scrappers Haven
Kindred Creations
~ Val Selby www.littlescrapbookshop.com

KISS Pages

With all the incredible embellishments out there it’s easy to get distracted and overwhelmed. Then ad in all the big, bold layouts in EVERY magazine, including the “simple” ones, and it’s enough to make you shrivel into a corner and suck your thumb. How can we ever make each layout in our album as perfect as Becky Higgins and Lisa Bearnson? Here’s a big tip, their every page does not look like that, NO ONE has time to make every single layout an incredible visual masterpiece. So keep shooting for a few hot layouts, but mostly stick to some simple pages to get those pictures in albums quicker.

    Keep it simple sister (KISS) means the basics only. Cardstock, pictures, adhesive and journaling are all that is necessary. If you get some basic sketches from online (Scrapmaps) or one of the great books (Creative Sketches for Scrapbooking) out there you WILL get caught up on your albums. Use standard borders, mats for pictures and lots of journaling. If you feel like embellishing or the page just screams for it, use a strip of patterned paper for the border. Or add a couple of stickers or stamps.

Don’t over think your pages and forget why we scrapbook. The journaling and relaxing while you scrapbook are the true art.

~ Val Selby  www.littlescrapbookshop.com

Top 10 Reasons to Scrapbook

Number one is the most important aspect of scrapbooking to me.  The others in the list are in no particular order.  Sometimes my all time most important reason to scrapbook however, is to get together with friends.  Remember that this is an important aspect for some of us in scrapbooking.  When you are in need of motivation, make a list of why you scrapbook.

1. Save the incredible stories only you can tell.

2. Tell who, what, when and where about the photos you took.

3. Get together with friends.

4. Collect pretty paper and embellishments. 

5. Make memorable gifts.

6. Pages unique to you and your style.

7. Save stories for future generations.

8. Get pictures out of boxes and envelopes.

9. Communicate with family while looking at photos and layouts.

10. Relaxing and self-gratifying.

~ Val Selby  www.littlescrapbookshop.com

Spectacular Scrapbook Styles

~author Marcy Larsen

When starting your scrapbook pages, it is good to remember that no two people scrapbook the same.

Also, no scrapbook pages with turn out exactly the same. That is because we all have our own personal style that we use. These styles shine through everything on a scrapbook layout, for the use of one color and embellishments to the choice of paper textures and lettering we choose.

Your individual style can also change over time as a your you learn new techniques and try different products. All of which is perfectly fine, because there is no right or wrong way to design your scrapbook.

As your style changes, your albums take on a new meaning as a unique way to reflect your personality. With that, there are five different categories that your styles fall into.

Classic

Classic pages are usually done in darker, solid colors in shades such as navy, burgundy, and forest green along with black and white. Straight lines lend and elegant look that is crisp and clean. This design is simple yet timeless.

Contemporary

The contemporary style “pulls out the stops” with both patterns and accents. The look is clean, with spare lines, and may include a few strong accents or embellishments.

Romantic

This includes floral patterns, velvets, lace, and usually soft, warm colors. The text is often create using a script or an ornate, embellished lettering.

Playful Charm

This style incorporates complementary colors in muted or bright tones. Paper with coordinating patterns, checks, dots, strips, and accents such as paper dolls, three dimensional and whimsical accents are common.

Naturalist

Pages with the Naturalist style get “back to Nature” through earth tones, speckled paper, and monochromatic colors. Naturalist pages often incorporate texture by using handmade papers, fibers such as jute, ripped torn or sanded edges.

With these different styles in mind, remember that there are different levels of complexity to each layout. You can choose from Quick, Intermediate, and Complex. Quick is simple smooth edges and a title, Intermediate is off setting things a little with slants to the photos and a few extra embellishments, and the Complex is adding layered borders, cutting shapes with your photos, adding a journal block and finishing it off with embellishments that coordinate with your theme.

Your style will change and grow the more you branch out and try new techniques and styles. You don’t have to stick with the same style or the level of complexity, mix it up a bit, you will be happy with your final layout.

Scrapbooking by Close To My Heart Consultant Marcy Larsen. Free scrapbook articles, stamping techniques and more at marcylarsen.com.