Scrapbooking
Scrapbooking is a way to keep a diary, history or story in the form of photographs, printed media, or other memorabilia in a
decorated album.
Scrapbooking with photographs has been around since photos became available to ordinary people. Old scrapbooks tended to have photos mounted with photomount corners and perhaps notations of who was in a photo or where and when it was taken. They often included bits of memorabilia like newspaper clippings, letters, etc. Modern scrapbooking has evolved into creating attractive displays of photos, text and memorabilia.
The most important scrapbooking supply is the album itself, which can be permanently bound, or allow for insertion of pages. There are other formats, such as mini albums and accordion-style fold-out albums. Some of these are adhered to various containers, such as matchbooks, CD cases, or other small holders.
Modern scrapbooking is done largely on 12"×12" or 8½×11" pages. More recently smaller albums have become very popular. The most common new formats are 6"×6", 7" x 7", or 8"×8".
Basic materials include background papers, photo corner mounts (however, there are many more choices than just photo corner mounts - zots, sticky dots, glue sticks that are acid-free, etc...), scissors, art pens, and mounting glues (like thermo-tac). More elaborate designs require more specialized tools such as die cut templates, rubber stamps, craft punches,stencils, inking tools, eyelet setters, heat embossing tools and personal die cut machines.
Various accessories, referred to as "embellishments," are used to decorate scrapbook pages. Embellishments include
stickers, rub-ons, stamps, eyelets, brads, chipboard elements in various shapes, alphabet letters and ribbon. The use of die cut machines is also increasingly popular; in recent years an electronic die-cutting machine, similar to a printer, can be connected to one's computer to cut any shape or font.
One of the key components of modern scrapbooking is the archival quality of the supplies. Designed to preserve photographs and journaling in their original state, materials encouraged by most serious scrapbookers are of a higher quality than those of many typical photo albums commercially available. Scrappers insist on acid-free, lignin-free papers, stamp ink, and embossing powder, and pigment based inks, which are fade resistant, colorfast, and often waterproof. Older "magnetic" albums were not acid-free and thus caused damage to the photos and memorabilia included in them.
In addition to the collection of photographs, tickets, postcards, and other memorabilia, journaling is an essential element in modern scrapbooks. More than just dating photographs, contemporary journaling is often reflective and story-like, or can take on a more reportive tone. Whatever the style of journaling that the scrapbooker chooses to implement, journaling is considered a priority in the completion of a scrapbook layout, second only to the photographs themselves
There are no hard and fast rules to scrapbooking. Typically, the more creative and resourceful the person, the better the page. Small, two-dimentional items such as ticket stubs from the theater, love notes from a special someone, or newspaper clippings can make the pages more interesting. Generally, the focus of the page is the photograph or photographs. It is best to stick with one or two good photos when starting out. The page is then decorated and embellished with items only limited by the creator's imagination. With the popularity of scrapbooking growing every day, there are more and more resources available to the amateur and professional scrapbooker alike. Digital scrapbooking is in its infancy, but shows great promise as the medium of the future for scrapbooking enthusiasts. Scrapbooking can be very easy to anyone who wants to give it a try. One of the most important things to remember when scrapbooking is to use the right glue. The glue should be picture safe and acid free(it should say so on the tube), because otherwise it could turn the pictures brown, or the glue could eventually stop working and fall off.
References and Further Reading