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Holding on to memories and saving them in a tangible way is something most people are wont to do because it is an indigenous part of our human makeup. One of the best ways to save those memories and protect them from damage and aging from exposure over the years is to take photos and save them in a scrapbook that will retell the story over and over again. If you have never done this, then a short course on beginner scrap booking is just the thing for you.

The first step in getting your photos and snippets of memories in order is to break them down in a chronological order; starting with decades and then years; or you could start with a certain theme and put everything relating to that theme in the same spot; or certain individuals go together; or maybe an occasion that you are highlighting—-put all the photos and memorabilia that go with that occasion together in a pile so you have them at your finger tips to work with easily. Now you have the ability to create and tell a story with all the bits of info you have, and you can let that info lead the way and tell the story; you just make it look good on the page by arranging it in a way that looks good to you.

A necessary factor when you are just starting out as a beginner in scrap booking, is to have a picture of what the page will look like in your mind’s eye when it is finished before you start working on it. Just that simple fact will save you hours of frustration because you can let the story you are creating on the page just flow, and you will know what direction you are working toward and have a pretty good idea of how to get there. You need to begin with the photo or the piece of memorabilia that you want to work around that will become the central focus of the page and place it in the central focal point and start to put other photos or clippings or whatever you have, around it. Move and rearrange and shuffle the pieces until you find a balance that feels right to you before you start gluing pieces down. As the page is coming together and feeling balanced while telling your story, you can then write little bits of information around the photos and what all, just to convey some emotion and info about what the photos mean.

The next major step in creating a page that will tell a story is deciding on the colors you will use to accentuate the focal point and bring all the pieces of info together on the page and create a unified flow. This can be daunting for a beginner in scrap booking, but don’t throw in the towel; we are all born with a sense of what looks good to us and what doesn’t, and most of the time we are on the mark when we sense this, and a lot of this “sixth sense” has to do with color placement and how it makes us feel. Keep in mind that there are colors that work together and colors that clash; and the idea here is to work with the colors found in the photos and enhance the major colors with colored matting or framing around the main photos so that the primary colors stand out and make a statement. Don’t use too many colors, because your eyes and brain will go into overload mode and the unified theme and statement you are making will be lost in the mishmash of mixed colors. Keep your color palette to a minimum and keep your eye on the focal photo or item on your page and what colors you want to make standout on that item.

An important step in making a visual statement with a scrapbook page is often one that the beginner in scrap booking would forget quite often; and that is cropping and matting your photos for maximum visual effect. Cropping a photo merely is cutting away the distracting background images in the photos that you do not need to tell your story, or they make the photo too big to fit in, or they are just ugly—-like a beach scene with wandering tourists blurred in the background when you were taking the picture of little Susie making a sand castle. You don’t want the tourists in there messing up the look of the shot, so cut them out. Leave in enough details so you can still tell your visual story effectively. And then the matting of the photo will help add color to and define the boundaries of the photo and make it stand out on the page by looking clean and crisp.

In order to do a good job of it as a beginner in scrap booking, you must have some essential supplies to get started. You need an acid free album with album refills; acid free printed papers, some card stock, adhesive or glue, straight cut scissors, and black ink pens. Those are just some of the basics; there are many more supplies that can be purchased for working in a scrap book. You can go to the ends of the earth in fancy decorative supplies and really do it up big, but to start out as a beginner, you really need just the basics and branch out from there as you get more comfortable with the whole scene.

Being a beginner in scrap booking can be tons of fun if you get the basic supplies you need, get your photos and treasures you want to immortalize in order, and just get busy. You’ll be amazed how your creative juices (even if you think you don’t have any) will start flowing and how terrific your finished product will look, and best of all; how much fun you had doing it.

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