Digital Scrapbooking · Journaling · General · Organizing
Scan greeting cards to make photo mats. You can use holiday cards like Christmas and Easter, birthday cards or even sympathy cards for memorial pages.
Are you looking for some clip art that is free and can use in a layout? Microsoft has a Design Gallery Live (DGL) on its website with thousands of clip arts, photographs, patterns, etc. There are two ways to find DGL. The website is : http://dgl.microsoft.com/. Or, when working in a MS Office document (Word, Excel, etc.) and you select Insert/Picture/Clip Art, there is an icon on the “Insert Clip Art” window named Clips Online. Clicking on that icon will take you directly to Clips Online, but only if currently connected to the Internet. There is a search engine to help find the clip art or photograph in the topic. The website does contain seasonal and topical graphics to download. Also read the “Fine Print” in the End-User License Agreement for limits on using the clip art (typically for non-commercial use only). Best of all this is all FREE!(from Linda Thomas)
Quick (and not fancy) scrapbooking. I needed a quick layout to place digital pictures for immediate mailing to family members who don’t have computers. I don’t have any of the “scrapbook software” and you don’t need it either if you can use a word processing software, presentation or graphics software. Make color blocks, insert clip art and then arrange the pictures and captions. And in less than 30 minutes you can have a layout ready to go. This is not intended to be a substitute for scrapping (I’d never give up my scrapping toys!).(from Linda Thomas)
Save all scraps. They can be used for journaling labels if big enough.
Don't throw bad photos away. They can be used to create wonderful looking lettering for headlines or titles, or use them with your punches.
Don't forget to identify the people in your photos. Just because you know who they are doesn't mean the person looking at the scrapbook at a later date will. Remember the 5 W's for journaling - Who, What, Where, When and Why.
It is better to do all titles and journaling on a separate piece of paper instead of journaling directly onto your background paper. Nothing is more frustrating than spending time matting and laying out your page and then ruining it by spelling someone's name wrong.
Transcribe funny family quotations, stories and jokes.
Food is the center of many family celebrations. When scrapbooking your photos of a celebration, include recipes used for that special meal. Great Aunt Gertie's green bean casserole, Uncle Albert's baked ham. Take a photo of the help in the kitchen cleaning up. Recipes handed down generation after generation become famous!
When racking your brain for that perfect page or album title, look through your CD and video collection. A movie or song title, or even a line from a song or movie might be just the right line for your layout. (trick from Pam Vogt)
Let your child dictate the photo captions to you.
Add chalk highlights to die cuts to add shading.
Save all scraps. They can be used for frames if big enough and the smaller scraps can be used with your punches.
To sharpen decorative scissors and punches cut through aluminum foil.
When your punches are sticky put cardstock behind the wax paper and punch a few times. Not only will you get a few shape punched out but the cardstock helps the wax to get in all areas evenly.
Never crop an original, one-of-a-kind photo. This includes antique photos that are irreplaceable. If you feel you NEED to crop, get a color-copy made and crop that one. Also using frames can hide unwanted parts from showing.
Create decorative borders with fingerprints and handprints.
Making a family tree page? Well, find a nice big tree with lots of branches and up you go! Do this at a family reunion and perhaps have each branch of the family pose in the tree. The elderly members stand at the base of the tree.
Sew acid free doilies right onto your scrapbook page to make a decorative pocket to hold love letters or cards. Use a large stitch so the paper doesn't tear. Sew on three sides making a square pocket. If using a large heart shaped doily just stitch on the two straight sides.
Make a corner design using the Fiskars aligning border punch. Place the corner of the paper even with the corner notch that's indicated on the punch. Flip the paper up-side down, turn 90 degrees, and place the other side of the corner of the paper even with the corner notch on the punch.
Make your own stickers. I found a website that sells full sheets of label stock for ink jet printers (www.paper-paper.com). They have clear and white available. I purchased the clear to make some pages for my husband's NASCAR autograph pages. I have photos of him getting autographs from the drivers. I scanned and printed the autographs onto the clear stock and cut them out and stuck them to the page around the photo. (tip from Joy Leake)
When you receive Christmas, Birthday or any other special cards save them along with your die cuts, sticker or other scrapbooking stuff. Later when you are creating a page you can use sayings or even cut out a part of the card for some free "die cuts". (trick from Kara)
Don't forget to include everyday shots and shots of the picture taker.
Don't do your heritage or wedding photos first. Looking back at the first albums you did, you will find that your style changes and improves so start on holiday photos, children as you will have many of those, seasons, etc. We tend to want to start at the beginning which is wedding and heritage.
To remove something from a page (picture, die cut, stickers, etc.) try dental floss. A hair dryer set on low for just a few seconds also works but be very careful. There is also a product called "Un-Du that works well.
Include in your scrapbook a map of your city or province showing your house, baby's first house, young married's house, etc. along with a picture of that house.
With so many magazines, its hard for me to remember which ones had which information in I wanted to use. Now I just photocopy the first page inside each magazine which tells me what is in the entire magazine and keep that in a notebook for fast lookups. (tip I found on the net from Vonnie, PA)
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