Scrapbooking Ideas

Scrapbooking is simply a method to which you arrange you catalogue your personal experiences and memories in your own unique way, by placing symbolic items such as photographs onto several pages and decorating around them. The pages are then bound together to form a scrapbook.

Scrapbooking is quite possibly one of the most intensive rainy day crafts, as far as creativity is concerned. You see, a true scrapbook is one that is amazingly vibrant, colorful and "action packed" - with none of the pages being left blank.

It is a true means of expressing your feelings, opinions and memories of a particular event or time through this wonderful craft; by attaching photographs and other symbolic items onto a page of a book - and decorating accordingly. Some of the "expert" scrapbookers out there have truly mastered this art, with stunning showcases of creativity and talent - with scrapbooks which simple dazzle you with excellence!

One of the biggest problems for any scrapbooker is keeping ideas flowing. Scrapbooks are very nice to look at when done right, but when they aren't so well designed - they really look "simple" and "amateurish", which is why Scrapbooking ideas are *hot property* everywhere right now.

Scrapbooks are meant to be outbursts of personal emotion and feeling - spilled out onto pages in your book so ideally, you have to come up with your very own scrapbooking ideas in order to make a really impressive design. To help you along with this - you can acquire scrapbook layouts. Scrapbook layouts are general ways and setups which you can use to arrange your scrapbook's pages and act as a "platform" for you to grow your scrapbooking idea from.

A whole industry has grown around the provision and creation of these layouts which all act as a platform for you to spill your feelings and creativity onto. Since these layouts are made up by individuals or groups who you have never met before, they will not be able to gauge what you want to put into your scrapbook, which means that what they provide will only the foundations of your final design.

So, how do you come up with more scrapbooking ideas? How do you explode your creativity and design abilities onto your scrapbook pages!?

Well, there is a simple set of rules I use for my scrabooking idea:

1. Keep it topical - Don't put anything else on the page apart from stuff related to the topic on hand. I.E if you've made a page about your first school- don't put a picture of your first church on there too.
2. Adopt a Color Scheme - Keeping the same two or three colors on the page gives the scrapbook a really consistent look which is very impressive to the reader.
3. Don't Under-Crowd - Keeping the page bursting with activity is essential to giving the scrapbooking idea a lot of action and making it look interesting
4. Use Non-Authodox Materials - In your scrapbooking idea, don't just use the usual colored papers, corrugated card, ribbons, etc - express yourself further by using even more unique and bold materials such as miniature key rings or magazine clippings and the like.
5. Put *All* Ideas Down On The Page - For your scrapbooking idea, don't just put a bunch of pictures on the page - you need to annotate and tell the world about them with groovy and inspirational speech bubbles.

Scrapbooking ideas needn't be too extravagant or "over the top" for your scrapbook! Remember it's about things that are precious to you, which means that you have to craft the scrapbook idea about your feelings and emotions - no one else's!

Just keep to the five points that I outlined above and you should be fine. It's all about keeping your pages as topical and decorative as possible. You want to be able to enjoy looking at it later on, so why not craft a scrapbooking idea around that basis?

Scrapbooks can be 2-100's of pages long and each page needn't be different if you don't want it to be. Just make sure you keep a single theme or scrapbooking idea throughout the scrapbook, which will make it even more inviting and "readable" when you come to look at it.

Don't make coming up with scrapbooking ideas a chore - make coming up with scrapbooking ideas exciting so that it gets you through that rainy day! Make sure you follow your heart and feelings more than anything else... because at the end of the day - scrapbooking is all about spilling your feelings and thoughts onto paper!