Scrapbooking

What is scrapbooking?

The practice of collecting and combining family photos and memorabilia and recording events, incidents and stories in a scrapbook style album is known as scrapbooking. It is a wonderful hobby of chronicling the happenings in your family.

History:

History of scrapbooking or the hobby of recording events in one’s family dates back to ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, ‘hypomnemata’ was a form of recording one’s own stories and thoughts in a notebook. Scrapbooks with photographs started only when photos were available to people. Scrapbooking is an old term which was reborn only during the 1990s in a new and interesting manner. Scrapbookers were quick enough to adopt new and scientific techniques of photo preservation to ensure that photos last for a much loner period of time than simply lying elsewhere in albums. Today scrapbooking has evolved into a fine craft which involves creative story telling by means of photos and momentos and adding information on why, what, where and when.

Materials to get started

The first step especially for starters is to collect a few essential things without which you cannot proceed.

• Albums: You have to buy an album which perfectly suits your need and purpose. You need not buy an expensive one but invest on a quality product.

• Paper: Paper is a vital material required for scrapbooking. Paper which you wish to use must be acid-free and of ‘archival quality’. The size of the paper will depend on the size of your album.

• Photo glues: You must use good quality glues and adhesives so that the photos stick firmly without having to stick it again and again. The adhesive should also be acid-free. You can use glue pens, glue sticks, photo corners and photo splints for your acrapbook.

• Scissors: A good pair of sharp scissors is a must for starting your scrapbook. You can use decoratove scissors to give your photographs an irregular but an elegant pattern.

• Pens: To start scrapbooking a basic black, red or a blue pen will do. You can use gel pens for decorating your page with bubbles, photo corners or stitches on the border of the page.

• Stencil: A basic stencil which contains various shapes like circles, rectangles, squares or hearts is a useful tool for acrapbookers. You can trace with a pen or a pencil around the interior of a photo and crop it accordingly.

• Sheet protectors: Page protectors should be inserted into a binder as it is excellent against dust, fingerprints and other materials.

How to start?

1. The best way to start is laying your hands on all possible photographs you can. Collect all large, small family albums for your scrapbook.

2. The next important step is sorting the photographs. You might need help of your elders to sort it out according to year, month and event.

3. Start scrapbooking from your favorite event or year and have make generations feel proud of their lineage.

Tips:

• If a photo is torn or scratched, the best way to preserve is scanning the photograph and taking a print of the photograph.  

• It is best to use old and heritage photographs as it is without cropping or designing.

If you are using original photos, use photo corners instead of glues and adhesives.