by Michelle Ives

Created on: February 11, 2007   Last Updated: May 04, 2007

Most people believe you need to buy paper in every color, stickers, pens, the works. All you really need to get started is most importantly pictures, and of course some sort of adhesive and a book to put everything into. Depending on your budget there are many places to go. If you want to do it cheap both Walmart and Target have plenty of items to pick up. If you willing to spend more there are specialty stores or one of my favorite's Creative Memories.

Once you have purchased your necessary items and are ready to start you scrapbook I suggest starting with your most recent pictures. You will remember the most about those so journaling will be much easier. Once you are caught up you can go back to your older pictures and work on those pages. I suggest journaling as much as you can even little things like names and ages of people in the pictures is important. I love putting in captions of what was said during the pictures. Things you say you could never forget, are always best to put in there. The reason for this is so that when people see these books later they know exactly what was going on in the pictures.

Never fear overlapping pictures, this technique is great for covering up something in the corner of the picture you wish wasn't there, but have are unable to cut out. I don't recommend mirror imaging your pages, the pictures tend to stand out less. Don't worry about less than perfect handwriting, handwritten jounaling is more personal.

Once you have the basics down you are ready to start with embellishments. Stickers are the easiest to use and find. My favorite to use are velum's, but they are trickier as you have to find the proper adhesive for it. There are many other choices for embellishing your pages. Such as, stamping, buttons, ribbon, embossing and anything your imaginative mind comes up with. The most important to thing is that you find photo safe, acid free products, so as not to ruin your pictures.

If you chose to go with Creative Memories their tape runners are the easiest things to use! Their scrapbooks are not only acid free they are flame retardant. Who couldn't love that! Creative Memories is great for beginners as they have page ideas and they have all kinds of embellishments that match so you never have to question if it'll match!

Most importantly remember that scrap booking is all about your creativity!

Learn more about this author, Michelle Ives.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.