Little Lesson Number 13: How To Create A Scrapbook Page

By Nancy K. Crevier

Life is a series of tasks. Some are easier to perform than others. Some are downright tricky. Some tasks we have mastered, while others remain, for one reason or another, a mystery. The Newtown Bee is presenting a series of short articles, “Little Lessons,” meant to light the way to a new or easier way to tackle those day-to-day duties, or even those less commonly encountered tasks, each one accompanied by a video at www.Newtownbee.com. Welcome to the classroom.

With a few photographs, the right tools, thoughtful planning, and a sense of fun, anyone can learn to put together a scrapbook page. For Fran Ashbolt of Newtown, scrapbooking, creatively preserving photographs and clippings in a decorative album, is somewhat of an extension of two of her other hobbies, journaling and quilting. She was inspired by her sister, who makes her own gift cards.

“She showed me a few things, and then I got interested in scrapbooking as a way to preserve family memories,” said Ms Ashbolt. “It is a little like quilting, I guess, piecing together the ideas.”

Her initial successes with memory scrapbooks that she created for her son, Stephen, when he turned 13, and again for her daughter, Emily, when she turned 13, have resulted in more albums creatively put together over the past seven years.

“Now, I take photographs with scrapbooking them in mind,” said Ms Ashbolt.

It is possible to create a photo album, complete with decorative embellishments online, said Ms Ashbolt, but a three-dimensional photo album is much more satisfying to her. Part of the fun of scrapbooking is feeling the different textures of the papers and decorative additions, she said. Sscrapbooking can also be a group activity when friends meet to work on projects together.

Scrapbooking photographs can be as complicated or simple as one chooses, Ms Ashbolt said. Essential tools, though, include cutting implements like straight and decorative shears; an Exacto knife; a variety of adhesives, such as glue sticks, tape and/or an adhesive machine called the Xyron; a variety of pens and markers; cardstock or decorative paper; and of course, an album and photographs.

A few important points should be kept in mind when beginning a scrapbook project.

“First and most importantly,” she said, “when working from an original photograph, always scan the original and print a new copy to work with.” Do not crop or alter originals, she recommended.

Use adhesives, papers, and pens that are acid-free.

“Acid in the paper is what makes it yellow over time. The idea is that you are preserving it forever,” she said. Adhesives come in permanent or repositionable varieties. The advantage of repositionable adhesives is the window of time that they allow for a “change of heart.”

Last but not least, said Ms Ashbolt, when adding items like newspaper clippings, that are not acid-free, extra steps must be taken.

“You could copy them onto acid free paper,” she suggested, “or spray them with an archival mist to deacidify them, or mount them on a piece of acid-free paper so that they don’t touch anything else. Putting the clippings into a separate plastic sleeve is another solution.

To put together a scrapbook page, Ms Ashbolt prefers to lay out her pictures on a page that is only lightly embellished. “I think I’m a bit unconventional in how I do things,” she said. She also puts together the whole album in that manner, before going back to add “journaling,” the notes that explain the photo memories. “After that, I go back and add more embellishments,” she said. Other scrapbookers prefer to do the journaling and decorating of pages as they go along, said Ms Ashbolt.

Embellishments are what makes scrapbooking stand out from just simply placing photos in an album, as are the precisely trimmed and matted photographs, and the special paper selected to complement the theme or photographs. Embellishments can include items like buttons, stickers, brads, punched out shapes adhered to the page, rubber stamping, and decorative lettering, all available for purchase in craft stores and online.

“It’s fun. I’m like a child in a candy shop in a craft store now,” she said.

Devoted scrapbookers can invest in a Cricut machine, as did Ms Ashbolt. The Cricut cuts out custom shapes and fancy lettering.

“It is my ‘Rolls-Royce,’ and a treat I bought myself,” she said.

Creative use of objects found around the home can add to the fun of scrapbooking. On one page of an album Ms Ashbolt created, devoted to the family’s Arizona desert vacation, she ran her son’s toy car over an inkpad, and then added car tracks across the page.

A common error for beginning scrapbookers, said Ms Ashbolt, is trying to put too many photographs on one page.

The steps to making a scrapbook page are simple, she said, once the tools are laid out and photographs selected. First, pick out the paper. Match it to the theme or occasion: a pale blue patterned paper for a water park vacation theme, for instance; or a paper that picks up colors in the photographs.

“A lot of people scrapbook everything, all of their photos, but I tend to do our vacations and special occasions,” said Ms Ashbolt.

Then loosely lay out any background embellishments, and play around with the placement of the photos on the page.

“Some of the photos may need a mat to make them stand out, so I will then select those and mat them,” she said, “and then glue down the photos into place. When I’m all done, I come back to do the journaling and embellishing. It’s that easy.”

To view the video of How To Create A Scrapbook Page, visit www.NewtownBee.com and click on the Features tab.