Scrapbooking

Secrets

Do you love taking pictures to remember all of the fun times in your life? But now, are there tons of pictures piling up collecting dust in a box under your bed or in your closet? This was a problem I came across when I was packing up my stuff to move off campus into my very own apartment. I am an extremely neat person, so I was looking for a way to organize all of my things so I wouldn't have boxes of clutter everywhere. This is why I decided to start scrapbooking. I sorted through all of my pictures to find the nice ones I wanted to include in my scrapbook and threw away the rest of them so I knew exactly what I had to work with. Next I organized them according to different school years and then activities within each year.
For example, below are some pictures that I have scrapbooked from the 2007 Regional SIFE Competition. As a brief background, SIFE, or Students in Free Enterprise, is an organization that I am involved in where we help local businesses and teach several different age groups about areas of business, such as market economics, success skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and business ethics. We then go to a regional competition in Cleveland, OH to give a presentation on our projects and are judged against the other schools in our district. In March 2008, we placed 2nd runner up in our league and won the individual topic competition for Business Ethics along with a nice $1,000 prize!!!

Steps:

1. Organize all of your photos and mementos according to your preferences. This could be by the people you are with, location, time of year, etc. Your scrapbook can contain a variety of things including pictures, movie tickets, programs, cards, or whatever you may like as long as it will lay flat inside the book. You can also write special stories, poems, or phrases on your pages.

2. After separating the photos into their different categories, count them in order to determine what size book you will need. You can have a whole scrapbook with theme, such as a vacation to Disney World. However, you could also have several themes within your scrapbook, such as one with pictures from all of your fun times with friends or family.

3. Next you should buy a book, whatever size will meet your needs. Other items that would also be useful to buy are colored paper, stamps, cut-outs, stickers, markers, glitter, scissors, and glue.

4. When your ready to begin, carefully plan out each page before glueing it so you don't make any mistakes. Choose a complementary background and add other embellishments to your photos, such as frames, stickers, ribbons, glitter, etc. to spice up your pages.

Tips:

-Look at other scrapbooks to get some cool ideas for your own scrapbook.

-Don't work too hard!! It's about having fun and letting out your creative side.

-It may benefit you to buy a scrapbook-making kit to save on money.

-Acid-free and lignin free products can keep your pictures from turning yellow.

-Be careful you don't cut the only copies of your family photos. Make color copies instead.