One of the most beautiful and thoughtful gifts someone can receive is a scrapbook album. Despite the simplicity of giving the gift of a digital scrapbook album, they can still be time consuming to create. It helps if you have a thought out and organised approach to your project, and then you can enjoy the process of creation, rather than scrambling about looking for that perfect element.
Smaller projects, like brag books or albums about single events, such as birthday parties, a wedding or Christmas, look better if they have a consistent feel from start to finish. The obvious way to achieve this is to use one kit, as the colours of the paper should compliment the elements. One major problem with this is that often one kit may only contain one or two versions of an element, such as ribbons or frames. Not only do multiple pages created from one kit look repetitive rather than matching, the creator will often become bored from using the same kit.
The key is the spend a little bit of time planning ahead. If you don't, you may find that on each page your project will evolve and change as you bring in new elements and papers, to the point where the end page does not resemble the start page at all. Although this looks like a lot of work, all up it should not take more than an hour, and will save you many more hours once you are actually scrapping.
1. Decide on your colour scheme: look at your photos and don't immediately dismiss the obvious. Pastel pink or blue albums are classic and timeless, even though they are predictable choices for a baby album. It will also be easy to find baby themed kits in those colours. A good guide is to pick one 'anchor' colour, such as black, white or brown, and 3 other complimentary colours. Use a colour wheel if you need inspiration.
2. Look through your stash, especially focusing on kits or pieces you repeatedly use. Look at collections of masks or frames, and 'bundles' you have bought that contain clusters, alphas or word arts that coordinate with the kit. If you use an organiser, tag them. If not, just copy them into another folder. Make sure you copy them, and do not move them. When the project is finished you can then delete this folder to free up some space.
3. You will have collected a basic kit that should have a matching feel to it. Have a good look through it, thinking about your project and the way you scrap. Is there a good variety of frames? Is there a nice mix of plain and patterned papers? Do the leaves match the flowers? Also, have you included a few finishing touches, like buttons or sparkles? Write a short list of what is missing.
4. The fun part- hitting the shops! If you are looking for something specific, post an 'In Search Of' thread in your favourite forum and let your fellow scrappers help you out. Visit your favourite shops, or if your own 'collaboration kit' that you have assembled focuses heavily on one or two designers, head straight to their stores to see what else they have on offer.
5. Once you have compiled your perfect kit, it is then time to get scrapping. From here, it is simply a matter of going straight to your folder or bringing up your tagged album and selecting a paper, framing or masking your photos, and adding elements, clusters and word arts around them.
Samantha Leah
Co-owner and layout artist for Beautiful Fairy, custom made photobooks and albums
http://www.beautifulfairy.com.au/
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