by Jane Pinder
As with any new craft, if you haven’t tried scrapbooking before, the first time you are faced with a blank page it is rather difficult to know where to start.
We thought, for the first Guilded article on scrapbooking we would keep it simple and help to allay some of the ‘fears’ of the blank page and piles of photographs! Over the coming issues we’ll introduce ideas for those who are more experienced in this field. 
So for starters we need to open those boxes of photographs and put them into some gorgeous albums, or scrapbooks, so they can be preserved, seen and shared. Personally I like the 8 x 8 size page as it is not too daunting a blank space. This size makes it simple to use just one or two photographs on the page, then you can play around more with the layout, journaling and embellishments you may wish to add. However if you decide to use the 12 x 12 size page you do have the option of using more photographs per page. Simply select a few for the page that are theme based. 
Whichever size page you opt for the next thing is to look carefully at your photographs. Pick out a prominent colour and this should work as your background page colour. Now you can pick extra papers and embellishments based on accent colours in the photographs. It sounds easy and once you start, you will soon get into the swing of it! The next step is to decide if you want to add any journaling or wording to the page. This is the part that explains the picture or tells the story. Sometimes all that is needed is a date and names. Other times you may want to include a more detailed account of what the photo or photos are about. The journaling can be done in several different ways. 
For a very simple addition you can use any of the die cutting machines to spell out the title for your page. If you have a little more story to tell you can handwrite a piece. This makes it a much more personal page and will mean so much more to whoever looks at it in years to come. However, if you have quite a lot to add you can always turn to a computer and print something. 
All journaling will look good if it is layered onto a co-ordinating piece of card or paper. Alternatively, depending on the theme of your page, you may wish to trim it into a co-ordinating shape. For example a holiday page could have the journaling on a tag or cut into the shape of a suitcase. A birthday theme and it could be in the shape of a balloon or a cake. Now for the most tricky part – cropping or trimming the photos. I found it very hard to do this when I first started but now, with digital photography, it is so much easier because you can just print off as many pictures as you want and you don’t have the worry of cutting up a ‘real’ photograph! 
The idea of cropping the photo is to trim off any unnecessary bits - things that distract the eye from the photo. Of course, a lot of this can be done on the computer before you print it, but you never know when you might want to trim it a bit more once it is in your hand. A paper trimmer is perfect for this, but if you want to crop the photo into an interesting shape, there are a lot of templates available that can be used. 
Once the photo had been cropped it is good to mat it onto coloured card or paper. This helps to make it stand out on the page and it can be matted onto one or more layers. Sometimes, however, you might like to use photo corners or one of the many photo corner punches that are around. 
So now you have the basic parts or the page and you can start laying it out on the page, moving it around until you are happy with the layout. 
At this point you can think about adding any embellishments. Don’t add them just for the sake of it. Think about the photo and the story behind them and add things to bring these out. These can include die cut shapes, eyelets, brads, fibres etc. You may decide to add a page title as well. 
Lastly, the fun part – putting all this work together! Make sure you use acid free adhesive when attaching everything to the page. This way you’ll be able to enjoy the page for many, many years! 
This sample page shows my sister and her daughter. They have both lost so much weight that they have inspired me to start losing it as well! The frames have been sponged to echo the page colours and pattern and the jounaling is done on torn ovals to mirror the apertures.  
This last page was one I did of my daughter, Sam, and son Mike after their graduations. As a project it is in my book 'Simply Sensational Rubber Stamping'. 
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Japanese Lace Paper Set
