Visit http://www.stickersnfun.com to discover 1000s more free scrapbooking ideas to inspire you to create your best pages. Here, Jennifer Gormly, an avid scrapbooker and writer, shares her secrets. Don’t forget to sign up for her free newsletter so you don’t miss out on any of them!

If you’re anything like me then most of your scrapbooks become scrapbooking pet pages.
I have 3 cats, Blue ( a British Blue), Sasha ( a tortoiseshell) & Kismet ( the big, black bruiser & the baby!)

Since my son left home these have quite sadly become my children and I avidly follow their antics.

As I’m sure you’re aware; whether you have cats or dogs, they all have their own distinctive personalities don’t they!

I decided to start scrapbooks about them when my son went to University and I had more time on my hands.

I’ve really enjoyed doing them and by browsing the web I’ve managed to pick up some good ideas and tips along the way, when I felt that my own ideas have become a little stale.

I’ve learned about patch scrapbooking, all the different things you can do with borders and layouts and my husband’s even trying to get me to try my hand at digital scrapbooking.

Unfortunately I don’t know any other scrappers close by and so when I became particularly stuck for ideas it was the web that I turned to again.

I finally found a site that catered for the likes of me with my specialised pet interests and love of scrapbooking.

I truly believe that you can find anything on the net, nowadays!

This site and others that offer this sort of help are invaluable for people like us who have burning questions but don’t exactly fit into the mainstream.

Scrapbooks and in particular scrapbooking pet pages posed no problem to these sites and I could happily go away full of fresh ideas, helpful hints and tips.

So, if you are struggling and need a fresh insight or two to help you with your scrapbooking pet pages , I suggest that you get searching the web like I did.

If you want to keep your treasured photos and pictures in a safe and convenient way, then scrapbooking is the way for you to go. The advantage with this method is that it gives you a chance to attach comments to the photos, comments that clearly revive the memories of days gone. It helps you connect to your past in a vivid manner.

There are a number of ways in which you can enhance the general outlook of your scrapbook. This you can achieve through the use of braids, woolen decorations, stickers and colored pens to make your scarp book look more beautiful. Using patterned paper also adds a spark to the overall outcome.

Scrapbooking punches are items that you must never miss among your scarp booking tools. The purpose of this item is to help create an image that speaks for itself about your scrapbooking activity. By using it to highlight your scarp book, you actually make the collection look more attractive and appealing to the eyes. scrapbooking punches come in different sizes, shapes and structures and you only need to choose them depending on your scrapbooking needs. Some are plain-edged while others have scalloped edges.

For the sake of more creativity and a ‘wow’ overall effect, there is a certain brand of a scrapbooking punches that allows you to come up with different shapes like a frog, bone, butterfly, star, leaf, folk heart, cat among many other shape that you could think of under the sun. With such a tool, scarp booking becomes a necessary and fun activity for young children too. The corner scarp book punches allows you to design the edges accordingly.

If you’ve recently been to Disneyland or just love Mickey, you may be searching for some great Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas. How do you add these elements to your page for a child or a family vacation without having them look as if you just slapped some stickers on a page? What are some ways to make these scrapbooking pages unique and original to you?

Start by thinking of the main subject of the page before you even think about what Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas you can incorporate. If you start with your embellishments you may find that your main subject of the page is overwhelmed or overshadowed by your accessories. It might also feel as if you just put your embellishments on your page without really thinking about how they’ll add to the subject rather than the other way around. The best Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas are those that are really going to let the main subject shine on the page rather than look like a jumbled mess.

Keep this in mind when sorting through the various Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas you have as well. It’s tempting to try to add everything you have to the page but this won’t look organized and thought out. Choose a few select accessories and embellishments you want. You may also consider doing additional pages rather than the one or two you had planned. And think of how you can make these unique and original. For instance, use two half-circles in one corner of the page to mimic Mickey’s ears. Or draw a rollercoaster in the middle of your page and have your wording follow its curving lines. These types of Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas are simple things that you can do on your own rather than simply buying embellishments and accessories and adhering them to your page.

Of course you can get very creative with your own Mickey Mouse and Disney scrapbooking ideas. If you have a picture of a baby as the main element, you can draw Mickey ears over their head. You can incorporate a sticker of Mickey as if he’s right in a photo with you. Or use the state of California or Florida as your background, depending on which Disney you’ve visited. Get creative and let your imagination guide you when making Disney-themed scrapbooking pages.

Christmas scrapbooking holds a special place in our albums. Offering lots of special dreams and fond memories because there are so many themes to follow – beginning with the snowy weather and ending with the religious meaning of the season, there are plenty of scrapbooking ideas inspiration to draw from the season.

Some suggestions for your Christmas scrapbooking might include creating a special Christmas Idea scrapbooking project. This could enlist the help of all members of the family. For a special loved one far away, perhaps serving in the military or for an infirmed grandparent, a special gift such as a Christmas scrapbooking calendar with family pictures and a little journaling would be a great idea. Start early to insure that you are finished on time.

Another idea is to take head shots for each person in your family or each of your friends. Make an ornament from their head shot using colorful background papers, and a circle or ornament template. Cut and adhere the photos and baubles at different heights from the top of the page. Use realistic Christmas scrapbook tree paper across the title block for added effect. Add additional ornaments with favorite Christmas Scrapbook memories. This “Family Tree” idea and other Christmas ideas for scrapbooking will make your family album lots of fun to look at in later years.

A few more Christmas Idea scrapbooking techniques:

Save pieces of wrapping paper for picture backgrounds. Use the ribbons from your Christmas gifts, tie bits and pieces along the spine of an album to decorate it. Staple pieces of ribbon to the edges of the page or onto journaling. Save colorful gift tags for embellishments. Have the children write letters to Santa. Save them or scan and reduce them to use as embellishments for your holiday pages.


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com

Okay so you have 2 items to consider. These items both tell the same story. They both have identical story telling items such as photos, clippings, text sections. One item is a notebook, plain and simple. A notebook that involves just telling the story and if the story isn’t so good, chances are that the person reading it will miss the point or not finish. The other item is a scrapbook. It too tells a story. But with the story come items that don’t affect the story but do offer some glitter and attractiveness. This is achieved with things like stickers, templates, punches, borders etc. The items complement the story grabbing the reader and making it more likely that they continue.

The popularity of scrapbooking is soaring. From early records called hyponemata, used by ancient Greeks to today’s art form. Not only is scrapbooking an art form but it is now considered an industry. Go ahead look in the yellow pages in the phone book. There are always entries for scrapbooking and there are more references every year. Both online and brick and mortar locations are proof to the ascension of this activity.

On the timeline of scrapbooking, you will see several blips or examples when the penetration of the market increased markedly. The ready availability of paper and supplies let common people take part in the art. The latest event to boost scrapbooking is the proliferation of computers and the internet. In days of old, supplies consisted of papers, stencils, pens and pencils. The stamps, templates, glue and scissors are now joined by printers, scanners, photocopiers because of the technology boom.

Along with the digital scrapbook comes scrapbooking software. Online companies that specialize in scrapbooking supplies found that without scrapbooking software, the supplies were slow to sell. They found that if they gave away or charged minimally for it; lots of people would try it out. Give the people the tools and they will come and buy. Once confined to paper products, quotes and decorating material, the art of scrapbooking has a lot more options with digital format. You can combine digital with paper product at any point in the process. You can produce the whole scrapbook digitally or produce it digitally and then print out a hard copy. You can just pick up digital items for a hard copy scrapbook.

Instead of the old paper, glue, scissor method of scrapbooking now people are using scrapbooking software to produce a page virtually. No paper, no glue and no running with scissors. Instead of paper, there were displays, (save the trees), glue and scissors were taken over by copy, cut and paste. Online scrapbooks were the result of scrapbooking software. Photos, clippings and text can be entered on pages with standard pre-prepared layouts. Don’t worry, you can still add touches or mix and match. You can make digital collages, picture clipboards or whatever you fancy for a medium to store your memorabilia online. The scrapbooking software will lead you through the process question by question. The process ends with a beautiful accounting of the story.

One of the benefits of scrapbooking software is that the producer can decide who sees the final project. It can be private, it can be whomever he decides should see it or just post it online, even to groups of scrapbookers checking out each other’s methods. When you come to think of it the present social networking boom has its roots in scrapbooking. It is a logical progression of the technique. A page on Myspace is very similar to a page in your scrapbook, either online or offline. The thing about social networking and some scrapbooking online entities is that now you can attach sound and video: the total package.

Some people would think that the computer is taking over the art form with the resulting loss of creativity, but actually the opposite is true. The computer offers a lot more options to scrapbookers and makes it easy to be creative, just click and place. Scrapbooking software can be used for a number of purposes with social networking. One can communicate what they want to various groups. Groups like friends, dates, marriage and even employers. Using the software effectively will portray the producers as talented and someone who should be checked out. If you are designing a social networking page, you could help yourself by checking out software for scrapbooks. It is a perfect medium for connecting with other people and telling stories.