Memories to remember

There are such a lot of exciting events that occur in October, all leading up to Halloween. Have your camera prepared so you don’t miss a single Kodak moment!

To start, there’s the costume selection. Odds are, your youngster will need to try on 3 or 4 or more before settling on their ideal choice. There’s also the trip to the pumpkin patch to choose the perfect pumpkin, the one that you will turn into the “just right” jack-o-lantern. You may even want to capture memories of raking the yard, hanging up the decorations, or baking Halloween cookies and goodies.

Getting supplies together

Obviously, the first step to building a scrapbook, is getting a scrapbook to start with. While craft stores can offering a wide range of sizes and styles from which to choose, you can also download many excellent digital layouts online for your perfect scrapbook. Halloween themed kits are plentiful and popular.

While you are shopping around, you may want to have a look at the different colored papers, stickers, and other wide and varied assortment of embellishments that are available to add zip to your scrapbook pages. If you’re in need of stencils, scissors, or glue, don’t forget to add those to your shopping cart as well.

Memories to incorporate

What you choose to include in your scrapbook of Halloween is entirely up to you – be as imaginative as you want! If you like, have your child take part by picking out photographs or other items to incorporate. If your “idea tank” is running low, here’s some fuel to get get you moving forward:

Go for a walk and gather some colorful fall leaves that are always dropping from the October trees.

Halloween cards or invitations you’ve received can be used as an embellishment. You may use the whole card so you can still read the messages, or just cut off the colorful picture on the front.

Any Halloween work-of-art that your youngster has created is an excellent addition to your scrapbook. Halloween designs your child has made in school are an obvious choice. If the project is too chunky or oversized to fit comfortably in the scrapbook itself, take some photos of it to incorporate instead. Any fun art project that you and your child worked on together at home would be a great addition too.

Suggest to your child that s/he create a Top Ten list of the current crop of “favs” this year – favorite costumes, candy, books or television shows, for example. Goodies from any parties that you attended are also fun to include. The present bag, name tag, or invitation make a sweet addition to the scrapbook.

Halloween costumes are an obvious memory to include, so be sure to take a photograph of your child all dressed up for their big evening out. Keep the camera ready to snap the action as the day unfolds.

Pix, pix and more pix! A really good photograph will capture the fun of the day in a way that a written description just can’t – pictures are worth a thousand words, as they say. Hand your child the camera and allow him or her to take some shots also, to get another unique perspective on the events.

Nab any decorations, souvenirs, or other things you think may help spark memories when you look through the scrapbook after it’s all over. You want to preserve memories forever, so if you would like to recollect that perfect costume or those special moments from your child’s first Halloween party, consider making your own scrapbook. Halloween, with all its color and clutter and wide-eyed excitement, is the kind of childhood memory that deserves to be remembered in style.

It can be very frustrating to come across some great old photographs or albums, and no one has taken the trouble to label the pictures or give you any idea of the who, what or where. Frequently, there’s simply nothing at all to help you identify who you’re looking at, and what made this photograph important enough to be taken. Nameless, dateless, placeless.

You can prevent this with your own albums by simply taking the time to do a little journaling. These days, you don’t just stick a photo in an album and label it – the process has become an art form: scrapbooking. The basics of how to do scrapbooking as opposed to merely taping your photos onto a blank album page is what this article is all about.

You see, a scrapbook is much more than just some random snapshots in a plastic sleeve. They are vibrant chronicles of your family’s history, intended to be passed down to the generations that come after. So you need to add some words to the process – what scrapbookers call journaling.

There are a number of good reason for journaling.

Firstly, it offers priceless genealogical data for later generations.

Secondly, journaling will ensure that your life, and that of your family, is preserved in a tangible way.

In addition, you aren’t required to provide a running narration of each picture to everyone with whom you share your scrapbook! They are free to stroll through your memories, stop at any picture that catches their eye, read the captions and stories, and enjoy it at their leisure.

Want to learn how to enliven your scrapbooking with journaling?

To start with, you’ll need acid free, permanent marking pens created especially for scrapbooking. These pens are particularly important to use as they are photo safe. They won’t damage the photos around them with the passing of time.

It’s nice to get pens in a variety of colors – but simply black is always an option, of course. It’s not the colors you use, it’s making sure to get the words written down.

At a minimum, be sure to write identifying information to go with your photos. That could include people’s names, and what their relationship to you might be. It doesn’t have to be elaborate – “My brother Tyler Smith”, “my daughter’s swim coach Leslie Jones” or “my roommate Theresa Johnson.” Adding a bit more info than simply a name helps those looking at your scrapbook to get a fuller picture.

Adding the date the photo was taken, as well as where, can also be helpful identifiers. But many people aren’t content simply identifying their photos – they want to take their journaling a step further. They might want to tell the story that is behind the photo. It can be as simple as a short paragraph describing the bare events, or it can be a more elaborate, multi-page memoir.

If you’re just getting started with journaling, and not sure how to proceed, here’s a short “how-to” scrapbooking lesson:

Lists are a good idea to put in your scrapbook, in lieu of regular paragraphs. If you’re creating a scrapbook for a toddler, say, try making a list of some of their favorite things (very Sound of Music!) – toys, songs, foods, bedtime stories, and so on – sprinkling them around the scrapbook wherever you see a blank space that needs filling.

How about asking someone to write a little something in your scrapbook, just like your high school yearbook? Have your child’s father write his perspective of their trip to the zoo. Get a buddy you went on vacation with to write about the things she saw and did.

Find quotes and poems related to the theme of your scrapbook, and use them to help fill some empty spots. Not sure what to do with that blank space above your Christmas photos? Look for a cute Santa poem to paste there.

Whether you decide to keep it simple and just add the important identifiers, or take the opportunity to get more elaborate and creative with your story-telling, journaling will make your scrapbook uniquely personal.

These basic tips on how to make your scrapbooking efforts cherished as an heirloom should get you off to a good start. You will also be gifting the next generations with information about your life and family that they will be very grateful to have.

Much has been written in praise of the Cricut. Book after book has been devoted to helping the dedicated scrapbook fan make the most of this tool, offering tips, tricks and design ideas. But when it comes to Design Studio, possibly the best product marketed by the creators of the cricut, book help can seem pretty scarce. But the fact is, as helpful as DS is to the scrapbooking process, the manual that comes with it is pretty thin on explanations.

The relative complexity of Design Studio is what makes it such a worthwhile program. It allows the scrapbooker to do amazing things that would have taken hours of manual labor before, if it could even be done at all. Wouldn’t you love to know how to:

• Eliminate having to search through cartridge after cartridge, looking for just the right shape.
• Re-use scrap cardstock by being able to position the cutting precisely where you need it on the mat
• Manipulate images and letters into the EXACT shape for your immediate need
• Weld an image inside of a frame
• Create shadows
• Use multiple layers and cutting mats in one project

You can. All those things and more are possible with this great software. But lacking help in the accompanying manual, you must put your project on hold while you scour the Internet in search of an answer, or spend hours in trial and error poking at the software to force it to give up its secrets. Your frustration level can rise while your precious scrapbooking time is eaten away. Yes, it’s a wonderful thing, Design Studio for Cricut; a book actually explaining how to use the darn thing would be even better.

Scrapbooking is fun. At least, it’s supposed to be. You want the tools you spend your money on to make your life easier, and allow you to turn out the masterpieces you saw in your head with a minimum of effort. You want to cherish the memories you’re preserving, not associate them with the hours of trouble and frustration you had to go through to get them on paper.

Books are always a good investment of time and money in the long run. The hours, days, even weeks spent in gathering the bits of disparate information to solve a single problem will only take away from the already limited time you have to spend on your favorite hobby. There are many excellent books on scrapbooking in general, and now you can find help to teach you advanced techniques for Design Studio, as well as other Cricut book tutorials.

Design Studio takes a scrapbook project from pipe dream to poetry in paper. It’s the best thing to come from the creative minds that brought you the Cricut. Book help to crack the Cricut DS code is finally available. Don’t spend precious hours trying to figure out how to make the software submit.

The best product we know to help you understand
all the great features of Design Studio is this downloadable
ebook and video tutorial, available by clicking here.

Does this describe you? Fear not. There are many excellent scrapbook books in print and online that will answer any and all questions you might ever have. They are designed to take you by the hand and gently lead you to scrapbooking perfection.

You can find scrapbook books that teach you the fundamentals of design, illustrating in beautiful color how to take your project from budding idea to finished scrapbook. Books that explain which colors and textures work best together, how to align your photographs to show them at their best advantage, and even scrapbook template books that let you copy their layouts when you aren’t sure how to make one of your own.

If you have an interest in learning how to make a digital scrapbook, books both in print and available for download are ready to teach you how. If you’re not yet ready to create your own scrapbook, or are simply interested in learning more about it, there are books that cover the colorful history of this wildly popular hobby. Wherever you are in the process of creating your own scrapbook, books that guide you to a greater knowledge of the past, present and future of the craft are a wonderful starting point.

There are even guides to teach you how to turn your hobby into a business! Scrapbook books on making a profit from the art you create are very popular themselves. People everywhere are making an income from the hobby they enjoy.

Scrapbook books lay the foundation of knowledge you’ll need to really master this artform. They teach you the tricks of the trade, and before you know it, you’ll be creating the scrapbooks you always knew you could. You’ll have a resource at your fingertips for tools, supplies, and training, and your confidence and skill level will soar.

Your scrapbooks will delight your family, awe your friends, and become the most welcome gift you ever gave. Practice, perseverance, and a good guide will be your ticket to successful scrapbooking. Fun, profit, and a grateful family. How cool is that?

It’s not just the amount of supplies in itself, but the time it takes to collect them and lay them out, ready for use. By the time you get everything together that you need just for one scrapbook session, you may have wasted ten to twenty minutes, precious minutes you could have used building that beautiful page you’re imagining. And that’s not even counting the time spent looking for the one vital piece of the puzzle that you know for sure you have, you just can’t remember where you put it…you know it’s around here someplace….

Have you ever thought about learning how to scrapbook, digital style? Digital scrapbooking is the perfect solution to the hassle of hunting for missing supplies, or that perfect but elusive tool. Everything you need is right at your fingertips, electronically.

Don’t worry about a lack of computer skills. It’s easy to figure out how to scrapbook using digital means. It can make designing pages and crafting albums go much more smoothly and quickly, allowing you more time to get on with the other important things in your life! Or, create even more albums. It depends on whether you have a life outside of scrapbooking, of course. When you follow just a few steps telling you how to make a scrapbook page digitally, you’ll find you’ve picked it up in less time than it used to take pulling out all those supplies.

First, find out how to get your scrapbook pictures made digital. If you use a digital camera to take your pictures, it’s easy to transfer them to your computer. But if you have some hard copy photos that you want to use, or aren’t sure how to transfer your digital photos to your computer, it’s a simple matter of putting your pictures on a CD, which can be done at any photography center. While there, you can also scan your pictures, adding those to the CD as well.

There are other cool methods you can learn about how to scrapbook beyond the basic digital steps outlined above. For instance, you can register online at any number of photo sharing sites and swap photos with family and friends. You can even use photo-editing software to enhance and alter the look of your photos – some of these programs are even free to use. But if you’re just beginning, don’t worry about any of that. Once you’ve gotten your pictures on your computer, they’re perfectly ready and usable for you to create your scrapbook page.

There are many excellent and inexpensive digital scrapbooking software programs on the market right now. Just do a search for “how to scrapbook digital” or “digital scrapbook software” and check out the choices. All of them will help you design, edit and print your pages, and most offer a ton of customizable themes, background and graphics options built right in to help you get started. Be sure to do your homework – compare prices and services before making a decision, so you know you’ll be getting the program that’s right for your budget, skill level, and needs. Once you’ve made your choice and bought or downloaded your perfect software, be sure to read through the tutorial and familiarize yourself with how it works and what it’s capable of, as this will save you a lot of time fiddling around trying to figure stuff out when you’d really rather be making your page.

Once you’ve learned how to scrapbook, digital-style, you’ll discover a lot of options that paper and cloth scrapbooking don’t provide, like being able to add audio, voice narration, and music, posting your scrapbook online so everyone in your family can see it, even if they can’t travel to your home. Fix scratches and “red-eye” in your photographs with the click of a button, and change your mind about your design in an instant, without having to waste expensive supplies.

Best of all, your scrapbook is secure. Whatever terrible thing may happen to the originals, they will be preserved online for you to print out and re-cherish. It’s like having a backup of your whole life!

Take your scrapbooking in a whole new direction. You don’t have to give up the tried and true (and fun!) way of building a scrapbook. But exploring a new option that gives you tons of alternatives that you can’t get with traditional methods could give your scrapbooking passion a real shot in the arm.