Many people say, sure I’d love to scrapbook if I had nothing to do all day but cut and paste things. The real waste of time is not creating a scrapbook, but rather taking pictures, dropping them off at the store, picking them up, putting them in a box, and then wasting numerous hours trying to find a specific picture months later. Why take pictures if you’re just going to coral them in the closet like cattle? Making a scrapbook is about preserving memories for future generations. With scrapbooks, people organize their pictures, souvenirs and mementos into themes and create mini-histories using safe materials to ensure the photos will last ages. Simply put, scrapbooks are more than fun times with friends, or that fulfilling feeling you get when you create something. Scrapbooks are is also an investment in your family and future generations.

Find Time to Scrapbook

Alright, so how do you make time? Don’t think you have to belt out a scrapbook in one sitting. Most people are short on time with a tall list of things to do, so their goal is to create a page here and there which will eventually complete a themed album. Like with anything else you want to accomplish, you must schedule time and break your project into little steps. You can sort through photos while the kids nap or are out to play. Think up themes and come up with design ideas when you are out and about and bombarded with color combinations. If you have a small child or children you may find it difficult to schedule time to breathe, let alone scrapbook, but there is always time, even if all you can spare is fifteen minutes here or ten minutes there, at least you can get a little done, like sorting pictures or placing one on a page. Once you have experienced the rewards from scrapbooks, you’ll find that time for it magically appears.

Scraping Lingo

Acid-Free

When wood goes through the process which turns it into paper, acid is added to assist in breaking down the wood. Once acid is added to a process, it doesn’t just stop working, you must neutralize it. So, the acid in paper, still alive and kicking, is a real enemy to photographs as it will destroy your pictures in time, which is why acid-free is such a common term in this craft. Everything from paper to glue must be acid-free. A “buffered” paper is one where additives, such as calcium carbonate are used to neutralize the acid.

pH

This is a term you’re probably familiar with if you make homemade soap or maintain a pool. pH refers to the level of acidity in whatever the item is you’re testing, in this case paper. The scale ranges from 0-14 with 0-6 being too acidic, 7 neutral, and anything above 7 has too much alkalinity. To give you some examples, battery acid has a pH of 1, milk measure at 7 and ammonia has a pH of 12. Because scrapbook pros want to stay away from acid in their paper, anything with a pH of 7 or above is good.

Lignin

Sounds like a tasty berry, but it’s not. Lignin naturally occurs in trees as they grow, but when a tree is processed into paper, lignin is responsible for turning it yellow and brittle with time.

Photo-Safe

Photo-safe is a term you’ll often see on packing or in instructions. This means that the embellishment, paper or glue will not harm your photographs. This is often another term for acid-free, but either way, make sure everything you use from paper to pencils, had one term or the other on the package.

Sheet Protectors

Finished scrapbook pages are often slipped into sheet protections before being inserted into the final album. Like all items you use, make sure that they are acid-free. The Polypropylene variety sold in grocery and office supply stores is not acid-free. There are also smaller protectors for smaller items you want to add to the scrapbook, but don’t want to put adhesive on. With these items, such as a very old letter, you would put it into the protector and then adhere that to the page.

Cardstock

Cardstock is a heavier, studier paper making it an ideal backing for pages with heavier embellishments or more photographs.

Adhesives

These are used to attach photos and other items to your scrapbook pages. There are many types of adhesives used in scrapbooks for the various items used in an album (remember, this country was founded on freedom of choice, so beginners, don’t roll your eyes with all the choices with you.) Remember to make sure that the adhesive is acid-free and be sure note if you’re using permanent or nonpermanent glue. Once you put it in place, it is there to stay with permanent glue, while with nonpermanent glue you will be able to pick up the item and attach it elsewhere. Other types of adhesives include tape, double-sided tape, liquid, and stick glue, and spray adhesive. Spray adhesive is excellent for gluing larger items. Because you spray it on, there is a thin even layer of adhesive, so when you place the item in the scrapbook you do not have hills and valleys of glue underneath. You can also use adhesive tabs which come in a variety of shapes large and small.

Photo corners

Photo corners are another type of adhesive, but unlike the others photos corners are placed in front of your picture and used as a frame to keep the picture in place. They come in many different sizes and colors.

Journaling Journaling refers to captions below photographs that give information about the picture. This is the heart and soul of the scrapbook as it gives us the story behind the picture. Journaling can be a few words, a paragraph, even an entire column and it can be done by hand, computer or any other method that allows you to give the details.

Embellishment

An embellishment is a decoration or design added to any part of the album with the purpose of adding character, color and style. These are things you add to reinforce the theme and tell the story. Stickers are a popular embellishment, but you can add anything from dried flowers to ribbon. Embellishment and creative page design are what make a scrapbook different from a photo album.

Punch

This is not a fruity drink, but rather a hole punch gone wild. The hand held shape makes come in an array of whacky shapes and patterns that you can “punch” onto your pages or if you’re really creative, your pictures.

Die Cuts

Die cuts are like paper punches on steroids. They are metal dies (molds) use to cut sheets of paper into specific shapes.

Straight-edged scissors

Straight-edged scissors are your basic household variety scissors.

Decorative-edged scissors

Inside of the straight shears of standard scissors, decorative edged scissors are usually made of plastic with ridged or scalloped cutting edges to give pages and pictures and design, rather than a straight line.

Exacto-Knife

If you’re not familiar with the term, you’re probably familiar with the sight. Exacto-knives are metal pen-like shapes with a tiny, very sharp razor blade on the edge that is inserted on an angle giving it knife-like abilities that are razor sharp and precise. It is a very precise and smaller version of a utility knife. With this type of knife and it even acts as tweezers in that you can pick up thicker pieces of paper with the tip, which is helpful especially after adhesive is added.

Craft Knife

Crave knives are used to make clean, straight lines. Another cutting device is the rotary cutter, which is shaped like a pizza cutter, only much smaller. This is excellent for working around corners. Any job or project that deals in design (graphic design, magazine layout, and advertising) relies on precision in images and since scrapbooks are a form of communication through pictures and images, you too will rely heavily on your cutting devices.

Templates

Templates can mean a few things, but all relating to acting as a guide to create a shape on the paper. A page template is a guide giving you page settings to create a page size. For example, if you are making a 5x7 scrapbook you could use a template that would allow you to more than one page from a standard sheet of paper. Templates are also placed over photos, that when cut according to template will give your photograph a new shape (like a heart.) Templates are also used to embellish pages.

Gel Pens

Gel pens are not going to bleed on you. They are so good at this, that when gel pens are used in day-to-day life, such as check writing, it is the only ink that a criminal cannot manipulate (i.e. transferring your signature from one document to another.) Their bleed-free super powers make them an ideal choice for journaling.

Colored Pencils

As with any art, there are many uses for the colored pencils from drawing decorations to creating colorful borders or text.

Cropping

I’ve been cropping for over a decade, yet I still think of a stalk of corn when I hear this term. You have a picture in front of you. Perhaps it is of your dog, but you took it at a park and there is a garbage can on one side you’d like to eliminate from the picture and perhaps there is too much space at the top of photo. With cropping you can move the parameter of your photo in, up or down, to get rid of “undesirables” such as space and garage. This will not resize your photo. If you started with a 5x7, you will still have a 5x7 after cropping, but the remaining objects will appear bigger and closer up.

Digital Scrapbooks

When your scrapbook is designed and stored online you have a digital scrapbook. These are gaining in popularity. These can be created in PhotoShop or even Word documents, PDF files, or even Web pages.