by Anna Wright

Created on: September 27, 2008

Do you ever feel overwhelmed and unorganized when you sit down to scrapbook? You don't even know where to begin. Just looking at all your papers, photos and supplies makes you want to pull your hair out. Try these 5 tips for an enjoyable and rewarding scrapbooking experience, the way it was meant to be.

1. PURPOSE: First you need to decide the purpose of this scrapbook. Who is this scrapbook for? What is the occasion? Is it a birthday book? A book of the years events? Deciding the purpose of the book before you get started will help keep you focused.

2. PHOTOS: Go through your photos and choose the ones that you want to use in your scrapbook. Remember that you can cut away things that you don't want in the pictures. It's always a good idea to have doubles since you will be cutting and gluing these photographs.

3. PAPER: Now it's time to pick out some of the papers that you are going to use. Look at your photos and take notice of some of the colors that you would like to highlight. Pull out all those beautiful colored and patterned papers and find some papers that coordinate and compliment the photos. Having papers that go with your photos makes all the difference in how nice your scrapbook pages will look when you are done.

4. PLAN: Planning out your page layouts keeps everything organized. You can do this one layout at a time or you can plan the entire book. It's helpful to go through all the pages and put the photos you want to use into the sleeves of each page. Then put the papers you want to use with those pages. I also find that making a sketch of the layouts is very helpful. That way you can plan where your photos will go, your journaling and any embellishments you may want to add. The sketches don't need to be fancy. A quick sketch on a post-it note works well.

5. PUT IT ALL TOGETHER: Lay your page(s) out and check for proper placement of all your items. Sometimes standing up can give you a different view. When you are happy with the way it looks it's time to glue it all down.

Now it's time for you to gather your supplies and put these 5 scrapbooking tips into action. Try them and you will find that you stay focused and organized while you scrapbook. Scrapbooking will now be a fun-filled and relaxing time. And isn't that part of the reason we all got involved with this most enjoyable craft to begin with. Happy Scrapping.

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