Scrapbooking for Beginners: Where to Start

Don't Be Overwhelmed, Start Scrabooking Today!

Scrapbooking seems easy enough. Snap a few pictures, glue the pictures along with some embellishments, maybe some journaling, into a book, and voila, you are scrapping. As easy as it sounds, one of the biggest hurdles new Scrapbookers have is figuring out where to start.

If this is you, at least know you are not alone. I recall buying my first supplies several years ago, everything from glue sticks to paper, little packs of embellishments, and big sheets of stickers, only to get it all home, where it then stayed in the bags for months. Every time I looked at all of the stuff I had bought, any ideas I might once have had suddenly seemed not good enough, or just plain old wrong. I would close the empty book I had also purchased, and stuff it back into the shopping bag, along with everything else.

Scraplifting

Then an idea hit me. No one said I had to be original. I subscribed to nearly every scrap magazine I could find back then, and what many of them were filled with were perfectly good layouts just waiting to be used as examples. Of course, my own would never be identical, and they were only meant for my personal use. I would never copy someone else’s work and try to claim it as my own, just the opposite. Once I started, when someone would ask me where I came up with such cute ideas, I would oblige them by pulling out my stacks of magazines, and more often than not, flip right to the page of the layout I had borrowed inspirations from for my own pages. A term is even used for this practice, and it is called scraplifting. A note about scraplifting: Copying someone’s layout verbatim is not scraplifting, it is copying, and no one should copy a page. Borrow how they assembled the page, considering the way they laid out the title and the elements. Use some of the same color combinations; even use the same photo techniques they might have used, but never copy a page exactly as you found it in a magazine or an online board.

Choose your Adhesive Wisely

Buy repositionable adhesive. Nothing is worse for a beginner than gluing down a picture or embellishment, and realizing that you would rather it is somewhere else.

Simplicity is the Key