The Album
Scrapbooks come in a variety of sizes. 12 inches, 8 inch and 6 inch are typical but other sizes are available. They must be acid and lignin free. Acid and lignin in paper causes the paper to decay, and over time it will spoil your scrapbook. Acid free papers can be a little bit more expensive but it is worth the extra, as your Scrapbook will look good for the forseeable future. The colours and the styles available are huge, choose one in keeping with the occasion you are celebrating. When buying the album also try to buy extra refill pages. These are not standard so it will pay to get what you need when it is available. If you buy a range from a major company like K and Co. or Making Memories you should always be able to obtain extra insert pages if neccessary.
What you need to Scrapbook
You need surprisingly little to begin Scrapbooking. Once you have the album, you need a good pair of scissors, a cutting mat, craft knife, acid free adhesive, card and paper stock and of course the photographs, and the mementos, you are going to put inside your album. Once you have these there is nothing to stop you getting started. After a while you will probably want to add more equipment. A useful addition is a 12 inch paper trimmer and you will probably want to buy punches, embellishments to decorate your pages. The choice of embellishments is huge. There are ribbons, buttons, flowers and beads. The list is endless. You can also buy a Die Cutting Machine. These are particularly good for creating alphabets, shapes and numbers, a basic need when creating a your scrapbook pages.
How to start Scrapbooking
It can seem a little daunting at first, but if you take it a page at a time it soon becomes much more manageble. Sort your photographs out and decide which ones you are going to use. If they are precious photographs do not use the original, get a copy and then it will not matter if you make a mistake or change your mind. You do not need to use the whole of the image, you can cut of bits that are not important. This is called cropping. Placing your photograph on card or paper that is slightly larger than the image is called matting. This gives your photograph more of an impact and it is one of the basic techniques of Scrapping. Finally once your image is on the page you may want to write some details about the subject matter. This can be done directly on to the page or on other cardstock and then placed on to the page. This is called journaling.
