Scrapbooking From the Beginning
The initial process of scrapbooking does take time and energy, however shouldn’t leave you completely overwhelmed, or broke. Organization is key and will be our focal point in getting started.
The basic concept of scrapbooking is to organize photographs and display them in some form in an album sharing the stories that accompany them. Scrapbooking is a simple way to share special moments in your life with family members and friends.
Picture this: you have family over that you haven’t seen in quite some time. Of course you want to share experiences with them, so you bring out your stash of pictures still in the envelopes that they have been sitting in since you had them developed. You stand over the shoulder of the proud family member as they turn pictures over in their hand, while you retell the details of the picture. (Not to mention as they get their greasy fingers all over your delicate photographs.)
While it is fun to share past happenings with family, it would be much easier to hand them an album with the stories already described in detail. You can still enjoy watching your family turn each page, yet they can read for themselves the details of the story taking place in each picture.
After my son Kieran was born, I wanted to have a timeline album that shared my husband and myself at different times in our life, up to the present. At first, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even have any pictures of myself or my husband growing up. When asked, I was given enormous amounts of pictures and had to piece through all of them and get a general time frame of when pictures were taken. My goal was to try to get stories that went along with the pictures, but time was short. I was making this album for my husband as a gift for Christmas, Kieran was born at the end of October. So, I just went with it. In the end, I did things incorrectly and when I learned more about the proper way to prepare pictures, I went back and corrected my errors. The key though was organization. With over twenty years of pictures in front of me, from two different people, I separated the pictures by year. This was the easiest way for me to get started.
Once the task was completed I was able to then reorganize, putting together pictures of the two of us at the same age in our lives. Because most of the pictures were old and it was harder recollecting stories, I utilized titles along each page to give an indication of setting, time of year, and occurrence. I completed an entire album using method, to get a good grasp of the story of our lives, then was able to focus on the time that we had spent together; dating, marriage, and having our son. Even now, before getting started on a project, no matter what album it is, I maintain several, I sit down and organize my photographs. Keeping pictures organized will make you feel better prepared to work on your scrapbooks. Instead of constantly fumbling through wads of pictures, you’ll have an orderly array of pictures ready for your next scrapbooking page or project.
Organizing Pictures: Start with the Present
So, it’s now obviously time to dive in and take your photographs out of your closet, from underneath the bed, or anywhere else that they seem to be hiding and get organized. You may have pictures already separated into older photo albums – take them out. Have you noticed these pictures have developed a yellowish tint? That is because adhesives and papers used in these older albums aren’t acid free and photo safe. It is important to remove the pictures from these albums to keep them from deteriorating any more than they already have.
A good way to store organized photos until you can get them into an album is with a photo storage box. The boxes can accommodate picture sizes up to 4X6, a familiar size chosen during developing. Index cards are generally included which allow you to separate the pictures. When dealing with a very large span of time, try separating your pictures first by year, much like I did in the previous example. Getting them separated will probably take some time, especially if you don’t remember when specific events happened, or if you come across pictures that don’t have any people in them. Some tips in getting pictures organized are:
1. Look at the dates stamped on the back of photos or printed on your original negative sleeves. Many developers include dates of when they developed photos. Even if it took you a few months to get pictures developed, this should give you a general guideline of when certain events took place.
2. Don’t be afraid to estimate dates and stick a picture in the pool of a certain year. You can make some assumptions based on the condition of the picture. Many original family pictures may be in black and white, this will give you an idea of how old the pictures might be. You could also get a general date from a good photographer. The size of pictures can also be an indicator of the date. Pictures now are generally developed on 4X6 paper, and this is the largest standard; in the past, the general standard wasn’t even 3X5.
3. Don’t write on the back of photos. If your intentions are to put them in an album, the information written on the back will not be seen. Attach a post it note to your pictures or index them on cards that are included in storage boxes.
4. Don’t get stressed. Organizing pictures might not get done in one sitting. Take the time to go through them, but don’t reminisce now. Wait until the stories can be written or journaled in your completed scrapbook page.
Once you have all of your pictures organized by year, you will be ready to get going on an album. It is recommended that you start your first album with your most current photographs. It is easier to work from pictures taken yesterday while the stories are still fresh to tell, than to start at a time in the past that time will be spent digging for memories. In the meantime, the exciting stories from pictures of the present will start to fade, leaving us constantly digging for memories. This is an easy spot where people tend to get overwhelmed. So, just start with now.
Just think: How frequently have you submitted film for one hour processing? Take advantage of the extra time you have purchased. Working on the ‘freshest’ pictures will keep you motivated to finish your current blunder of pictures, and if you’re like me, you have three to four rolls at a time to develop. Once this timeline of your project is complete you can go back into your ‘photo reserves’ and back track.
Part of what makes starting an album so nerve-wracking is that there are so many supplies available to purchase. It is easy to get excited and add unnecessary items to your shopping cart. Just like grocery shopping, don’t go when you are hungry, and make a list.
The next question is simple. What should you put on your list?
The bare minimum includes: an album, page protectors, extra paper, photo safe pen, photo adhesive, picture trimmer, good set of scissors, and time.
There are many different types of albums on the market available to choose from. One of the decision factors should be what you will be using this album for. Do you want a large album to display on your coffee table, a smaller album to bring out when you have company, or a special album that your kids can fumble through. Size is important. A larger album will allow you to display more photos on a page, often making more striking presentation. If all you need is a small album; don’t purchase a large one.
No matter what size album you want, there are specifics that you should look for in the quality of an album. You want a book with a hard surface, with pages that are easy to remove, replace, and that you can make additions to. Key word here is EASY. You don’t want to start working in your album only to find that you accidentally skipped a page and not be able to easily remove and adjust as needed. Working in your album should be easy. You should be able to open an album 2/3 of the way and have a flat surface to work in. If this isn’t the case, you aren’t getting a quality album. While you can find a nice album at a craft or specialty scrapbooking store, Creative Memories, a direct sales company, has some of the best books available on the market today. Look to spend between twenty to fifty dollars on an album, depending on size.
I started my first album on 8 �½ X 11 paper sheets and placed them in page protectors in a three ring binder. While I have great binders to present my work, I would prefer now going back to having a good quality, long lasting album. This is a mistake that I made and it is just not feasible to pull out all of my work to start from scratch.
The paper in your album should be photo safe, acid free, and lignen free. Acid is what makes your pictures deteriorate, fade, or look old. Most products on the market today are photo safe and acid free, however this should also be indicated on product packaging. Lignen is what is utilized in producing newspaper. In most cases a newspaper is already yellowed by the second or third day it has sat on your table because oxygen simply discolors the cheap paper. We don’t want our photographs or paper that we use in an album to turn yellow or discolor with time, so make sure you album indicates that it is lignen free. Another must have is reinforced pages; a binding on each side of your page, allowing you to turn pages along this edge without leaving greasy finger marks. Along this edge is where people usually turn pages. The reinforced edge lessens the need for page protectors, although many people still use them to preserve their albums longer.
While a reinforced edge will keep hands from dirtying your pages, a page protector can preserve your pages from liquid spills and dust particles from scattering on your artwork. Using page protectors is a good idea if you are going to keep your album on a coffee table or main living area with a lot of traffic.
On to other supplies. Album pages tend to come in specific colors, white, black, or natural. Most people use white surface pages and accent their pictures with different colored paper. There are a lot of different colors or patterned paper available, just be sure that what you purchase is photo safe and acid free. While some accent paper on the market is also lignen free, it may be more expensive, and if you aren’t using white accent paper, isn’t as necessary as when looking for complete album pages. Paper is usually found in packs in different sizes. Generally accent paper shouldn’t be used to cover an entire page of an album, so purchasing smaller paper than your album is okay.
A photo safe pen is necessary to help you journal, or tell your pictures stories on paper. Much like a caption, a journal entry will share special thoughts or memories that you can’t actually see in a picture.
There are different types of photo adhesive, with different types of dispensers, even glueâÂ?¦ whatever option you choose, just make sure it is photo-safe and acid free. You can’t use Elmer’s style glue on your photos, or scotch tape. Dispensers I feel are the easiest to maneuver, however there are also corner adhesives, and tape-for larger pictures. Generally these products aren’t too costly, so trying two different types of adhesive to find out what works best for you wouldn’t be too frivolous.
A picture trimmer and a good set of scissors are essential in preparing your pictures for ‘installation’. There are many types of trimmers on the market, you want to look for something that has a self sharpening blade, a safety feature so that you can’t slide your finger over the blade and cut yourself accidentally, and a guide to hold your pictures or paper in place as you trim. Having something portable will help if you tend to move projects around in your home, or if you are looking to crop with friends at different locations. Craft stores have a decent selection, or Creative Memories also carries a great personal trimmer. Personally I like the Creative Memories version because it has all of the above and a mat with grids so I can perfectly line up or even measure my pictures as I trim them.
You may find as you browse several different shape cutters available. These are nice to accent pictures and pages throughout an album, but aren’t necessary. Some people just have to have specific shaped pictures, ovals, circles, pentagons, hearts, and what notâÂ?¦. I have several different styles of cutters. I find that I have so many pictures to keep up with that it is easiest just to keep the pictures a universal shape, get them in albums and have some great captions alongside my pictures. Cutting pictures in specific shapes takes much longer and generally isn’t needed in the beginning stages of working on an album.
You want scissors that are easy to use, flexible in your hands, and have a clean blade. Don’t use scissors that you’ve had around the house with packing tape-or worse stuck to the blades. Mostly you will use your scissors to cut paper that are generally too large for your picture trimmer or if you want your paper or pictures cut in a particular shape.
There are so many other products currently on the market that you may find yourself stuffing into your basket as you browse the stores, however it really isn’t necessary to make any additional purchases currently. You can always go back and make adjustments to pages after you have the general guide of what you are looking for. Don’t overwhelm yourself at the start.
Stickers, pre-made borders, letters, and other paraphanalia may be handy at some point in your journey in completing your album, but put these purchases on the back burner for now. Let us focus now on getting the hang of trimming pictures and organizing them in an album.
First, make sure you set up your working area where you can spread out a bit. The kitchen table just before dinner, isn’t a very ideal location. You want to give yourself a clean working environment and a few hours to work before packing up. My ideal spot would be in my bedroom, where I could set up my tools, leave them out, and work into the wee hours of the night. Unfortunately my husband is a neat freak and I have small children that keep me on call 24 hours, so my options are a bit more limited. I work on a desk or I pull out a table.
Next, let’s review our pictures. Remember, we are starting with our most present pictures. Part of the beauty of having an album that allows you to rearrange your work, is that these initial pages, starting from the present, don’t necessarily have to be the first pages in your book. So, you don’t need to get lost in planning your entire album future now.
I take a lot of pictures, not all of them get put in albums, so now is the time where you go through your most recent pictures and pull out those most worthy of sharing with family and friends; and keeping forever in your book. I choose pictures that inspire emotion, laughter, or share great stories of what we have been participating in within a specific period of time. I try to sit down and work on my scrapbooks once a month, so in most cases the pictures are fairly new. In a roll of film with about 27 exposures, I’ll use between 10-15 pictures. This is just an average. There are exceptional rolls of film where I will use either all or none of what was taken.
Once I pick out my pictures, I crop, or trim them down using my trimmer. I am not one to measure to the tee the size of all of my pictures on a page. I do tend to keep most of my pictures on a page the same shape, usually squares or rectangles, depending on how the picture was taken, horizontally or vertically, and how much of the picture is usable.
Before cropping my pictures I take a look at what I want from the picture in my album. If there is excess space in the background, I’ll trim until I get a feel of the environment of where the picture was taken. Some pictures just capture moments perfectly and don’t need to be touched. In these cases, don’t feel that you need to trim, just leave the picture as is. I am one of those moms that carries around a camera in my purse. When a good opportunity arises for me to take a picture, I do. In the spur of the moment, pictures don’t always get framed well, often heads are even chopped off. These pictures can be saved, by cropping. Most of them anyway.
Pull out the pictures you plan to use in your album and work at “fine tuning” your camera work. If you are uncomfortable cropping good pictures without practice, do just that: practice. Take some of your pictures that not important that you have considered throwing away and test your trimmer. Make sure to hold your photos in place, on the edge of your trimmer while cutting, otherwise your picture could move. Even if a trimmer has a guard to hold your photos, the blade can tend to move the picture slightly.
After your photographs are to your liking, you can arrange them on your page. In working with larger albums, pictures are usually arranged on two-pages, or traditionally called a two page spread. Think of your high school yearbook, or go look at it if you need to. This is a very standard format for arranging pictures, story, and captions. We will use this style as a basic guide on working on our initial pages because it is easy to follow. Examples of a basic ‘spread’ are included. If you feel you don’t have enough pictures to utilize this style, working on one page is fine, just take the basic components and include them on one page. The basic components are a title, pictures (of course), and journal entries.
In arranging pictures, you should keep photos of a particular event together. I work on pictures in a timeline fashion, keeping events of the current year in order. For example: holiday pictures would be grouped together within two-four pages, or possibly more depending on how many pictures I had, or birthday pictures. They all should just stick together.
Once I have pictures cropped, I arrange them on my page. I leave enough room to journal, include a title, and in many cases, utilize a border that will accent my pictures color.
Work on the pictures first, arrange them and then use your adhesive to ‘glue’ them onto your pages. The best way to do this is once you have them lined up face up on your page, flip them over, apply adhesive to all four corners of your photos and then flip them over, making sure to place them where you want. I use a tape runner and occasionally I do misjudge where I want to place my pictures. The tape runner is a very strong adhesive, and will tear my paper if I need to move my pictures. I do occasionally still move them a bit, but keep the tears if there are any underneath my picture. Just keep this in mind. Everyone makes mistakes.
Once your adhesive is applied, flip all of your pages over. With the additional space that you have along your page you will want to title your page(s) and make sure you have room to journal. Titles can be written in with your scrapbooking pen; I like to utilize an alphabet stencil to write in my titles, then I can choose a color to write my title in that will compliment my pictures. You can use scrapbooking pens, colored pencils, and any other photo safe product to write or fill in captions. Stickers can be used as well. I use them occasionally, but I didn’t recommend purchasing them upfront because titles can be added later. As long as you know what your title will be and the color desired, you’re headed in the right direction. Also, stickers can tend to be difficult to use and I don’t want you to get aggravated. Using a simple pen, or colored pencils is a much easier starting point.
Having a difficult time thinking of a title? It can be just as simple as what is happening in the pictures. Think that someone whom you haven’t seen in a while is looking through your album. A simple title will tell them everything in one or two words. Just like a newspaper heading or title.
Journaling is the one thing that will separate your scrapbook from a photo album. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase that a picture shares over a hundred words. Imagine if you wrote a story this length for every picture you included in your scrapbook. I’m sure it could be done, however it would be quite difficult for someone to casually browse through your creative endeavor.
Journaling can include dates, a simple story that shares details of the pictures you have included on a page. I always make sure that I have a few sentences of journaling on every spread. These are memories that at some point (while I hope it wouldn’t happen) will fade. I want these moments captured and down on paper so that I can share more extensive stories to my children and family as they browse the album through time.
One of the reasons I mentioned to work with present pictures, is so that your stories of most recent pictures is still very vivid in your mind. Use these images and stories that you have and don’t skimp. Don’t simply state: Our family on Christmas. This statement doesn’t share the emotions or even the event that took place. Did someone in the family receive a special gift? Was this your child’s first holiday or special occasion?
Journaling can be written simply, in your own handwriting using your photo-safe and acid free pen. Some people though, don’t care for their own handwriting. There are other options for you.
Personally, I do handwrite most of my journaling. I just like to include these thoughts in my own handwriting, while I don’t think it is the prettiest. It is still mine, a creation I have made with my two bare hands.
I do use stickers, stencils, and other materials often to help me in creating titles and sometimes the first letter of a main area of journaling; for instance a month or holiday.
Using stickers or stencils to tell a stories tale would be a little laborious and timely. While I wouldn’t recommend using these for standard journaling, you can use printed paper. There are so many word processing programs that have different text options, colors to choose from and even art forms that you can include in your page. It is recommended that in using ink jet, or copy paper, whatever paper that you use to print on from home, that you place a mat underneath your journaling and adhere this to your actual scrapbook, in between your page and journal paper. Most copy paper isn’t acid-free or lignen-free and by placing a mat underneath the paper will preserve your album for much longer.
Preserving your album is very important. It takes a lot of time to organize pictures, layout your items that you want to include on your album pages, and then to tell stories that correspond with pictures. This is very valuable information to share with family, friends, and to pass on to your children as they age.
If you opted not to include a mat, you would need to use a colored stock paper that could be printed on to include in your album. There isn’t anything wrong with using printed journaling.
I often use specific phrases from Hallmark Studio, a scrapbooking program to emphasize specific events, like birthdays or holidays. I also have several books that give you examples to include in your albums or assisting you in getting the creative winds blowing. I do use these for catch-all phrases or when I need a statement that can capture sentiment.
Point blank: if you aren’t in the mood to write captive journaling, just pass for the time being and come back. There is nothing wrong with this. You can write simple dates or other notes that you want to include on your page when you can sit down privately and actually write. I am good at tuning everything around me out, so I don’t find myself in this predicament very often. Usually, when attending crops I will spend my time focused on completing certain projects, including journaling and find myself an hour left with a huge stack of pictures. This is usually when I focus just on getting pictures in the album with their embellishments and then will go back home and quietly write my stories. It does take time to write down the stories you want to include, often there is too much information, and sometimes too little.
Many times my husband will take photographs and I will ask him what he was thinking or what he does think about the picture that he took. That way I can get his perspective, as well as what was going through his mind when he snapped the photo.
In the end it is essential to include journaling, whether you sit down and complete pages or spreads at the same time or not, make sure to leave room on your pages to tell the stories that go alongside your pictures. It is easy to think that you will go back later to journal, and then forget to leave space for it, or to forget entirely to actually do it.
If you feel this could easily happen to you write yourself a note and place it on the cover of your album. More than likely this will get your attention the next time you reach for the book. If you have a hard time leaving space, follow a template that does leave space for journaling, or if the page is already complete, use the following page as a journaling page and let your mind run free. You can place accents along the page, or a frame to enhance your story even more. The point it not to make any excuses for not journaling.
I always loved sitting with my grandparents and having them tell me stories of their life. Unfortunately with seven children, they were quite busy and didn’t often have the camera handy to take photographs. I keep this in mind when I am working on my family albums. I want my children to have these stories to tell their children. That means the world to me. That is why I work on my scrapbooks. Find a motivation for you to journal. You won’t regret it.
