Transcripts
1. Introduction: Scrapbooking for me is about reminiscing over fond memories. It is an amazing way to reflect on past events, celebrate your favorite people, and even the pets in your life. I use it as a way to de-stress a lot and I love showing my friends the pages that I make of our holidays together. At the end of the day, scrapbooking is a form of storytelling and these photos and memories are going to last a lifetime. My name is Mei-Ying Chow, I've been making weekly lifestyle videos over on YouTube for the past seven years, but I've been making scrapbook content for the past five years over there. Often when I speak to people about scrapbooking, they either say it's too expensive or too time consuming. I do also study economics and management at University here in London. If I can ever do things on a budget, that's always a bonus. Today I'm going to share with you how I do resourceful scrapbooking to save on money and waste, but also my tips and tricks on how to save time and energy. Throughout this class, I'll be teaching you how to capture the atmosphere of a place into a page when relating to a travel spread. I will also help you perfect your title fonts as well as make your own polaroid for a fraction of a cost. This class is for everyone. Whether you have a lot of experience making your own photo albums, or you've made a baby book before, or you have no experience at all, this class has all the skills for different levels. I will be sharing my pages in the your project part of this class for extra inspiration. But I'm so excited to see what you guys create. Let's get started and I will see you in class.
2. Scrapbooking Essentials: I have made a few bad, but also a few amazing purchases when it comes to scrapbooking supplies. Let's start off with the basics and then I will run you through the other essentials. This scrapbook is ideal, it's not just A4, meaning that you can carry it around nicely because if it was A3, it would be way too big to be portable. If it was A5, you're really limited with your layout options because a single 10 times 15 photo would take up the whole page. As well as that, this book also has a ribbon so you can close your book because as you can see, as we start to fill up each page, your book can get quite big, so having a ribbon is a great way to condense it, takes up less space and it also means that you aren't going to lose anything, pages aren't going to fall out. Finally, it is also a ring binder, which is really handy if you want to add or remove pages. If you accidentally make an unfixable mistake without a ring binder, a normal spine will just crack as you start to fill it up, and then that increases your chances of pages falling out and that is the last thing that you want. Now on to adhesives because heads up, you are going to be sticking quite a lot of things. I have tried almost every glow stick tape there is and there are certainly the better options and then there are also the ones that are a bit of a gimmick starting off with a trusty glue stick. Not much I can say about this, other than this is basically an essential. Pritt stick is the best brand, 10 out 10 for stickiness, but six out of 10 for price. My spray adhesive is another glue that I slightly overpaid on. I think this can cost me about £10, and then the following week, I went to my local craft store and I saw this in Poundland for a fraction of the price, but this 3M brand is really, really good. I think it's the best one on the market. It can stick paper, wood card, foil, you name it, it can stick it all. On my prog pages, when I was sticking down my coins, I use this because I knew that it was going to keep it in place. It's basically a quicker superglue because you can just spray an entire page and then stick down your whole background and it will be set within five seconds. I do also how superglue. This is the UHU glue. But I don't really use this very often at all. I would only use it if I'm sticking down a bead or a jewel and I need strength, but I need accuracy because my spray adhesive is not super accurate. A tip essential would be these photo corners stickers. I recently started using these and I'm never going back. My sister actually started using them about 10 years ago when we both started scrapbooking. I never thought they were worth the £2.50, they are. I have 500 corners in here, which is 125 photos that I can secure in my book and take them out if I need to without ripping them. It also means if I don't like the colors of the photo, I can just take out and reinsert another photo. It also maintains the quality of the pictures as well because, with some glues, it can sometimes distort the inks and the same goes with sellotape. If you're putting sellotape, I think you might need acid-free sellotape. Another way of sticking down photos that people often overlook is using stickers. I love stickers. You will probably see later on in this class, but they are amazing. If you have a particularly resilient postcard or a picture that is just not sticking with glue, stick one of these, preferably a large one on the corners and it will do the trick. For my pages sometimes it looks like I use washi tape to stick down quite a few things. But often washi tape is for paper to paper. If you're sticking anything harder or stronger or thicker than that, it won't work. I do have a few washi tapes that just don't work at all. I have to glue them if I want them to stay. I only use them because I like how decorative they are and they often fit the theme of my pages really nicely. But they aren't the most reliable at sticking stuff down. One trick I always fell for twice was buying photo stickers instead of photo corner stickers. They are always next to each other in shops like Paperchase and crafts stores. They also come up on each other searches on Amazon so just be careful. They are basically pre-cut double-sided tape, so it makes it really easy to peel off, but it creates a lot of waste and lot of mess around, so I would just recommend using double-sided tape because it's a lot cheaper. Also masking tape is a really good one if you're going for a neutral beige page and you want that rustic feel. It is also super sticky and is really cheap as well. Another one of my scrapbooking essentials that I use in pretty much every page is my date stamper that I got from Poundland. It looks so effective on polaroids and it's also a great way to remember a certain date, or you can put it next to a title to remind you of the dates that you went on holiday, or your weekend trip away. When it comes to the pens I use, I am aware that ink pens will run when any water is spilled on it so I try to stick with my sturdy, cheap biro pens as much as possible. However, for the page that I did for my grandparents, I wanted this old-fashioned rustic look and so for that, I used a quill and ink because I thought it was worth risking it. However, if you're doing a pastel-themed page, I would highly recommend checking out the Zebra pens, they're mildliners, highlighters, or the Sakura Gelly pens. My Sakura set came with a white gel pen, which is also really useful if you're writing on brown or black card and you can highlight your words and create shadows. A quick recap, the essentials for this project are one, a scrapbook, preferably A4, two, some adhesive, a glue stick will work. Three, some some memorabilia, stickers, embellishments, and we will come on to those in a later lesson.
3. Making Your Own Polaroids: Now we've learned about the scrap-booking essentials. Let's go over how to make your own Polaroid pictures with the correct dimensions and save money printing them at home on photo printing paper. Polaroid photos have very distinct look. They are super versatile and they are aesthetically pleasing. They are often however, very expensive and can cost up to one pound per photo. That's not even including buying the camera or the print in the first place. A lot of my pages have been simple and effective, for example, my Dublin and Mean Girls page, all I had to do was print eight Polaroid pictures and then just fit them to a theme. You can go even simpler than that and take a look at my first year at uni page where I simply took a photo or everyone who came to visit me in pretty much the same space and just captioned and to them. It was a longer page to complete, but it took no time and it holds a whole year of memories. I am going to teach you how to make your pages look expensive and straight out of Pinterest but on a budget. Below I've linked to the Polaroid document that I made so you can just download that and edited offline. You do not need to request access to edit the Google doc, but just download it and insert your photos into the squares. I download my photos from albums that I've created on my Google Photos, and I just drag and drop them into my Word document. At first when I dropped them into the page, it created a 20-paged document. The first thing that I do is I just resize all the photos. Then I highlight the Polaroid template by either doing control A or double-clicking on that page. Then I will control C to copy it and control V to paste it and just paste how many versions of the template that you need for all of your photos. I save time by wrapping them all and rotating them if the portrait rather than landscape and putting them into the boxes, I'm not super accurate at that point but then once all of my photos are in roughly right place. That is when I zoom in and I make sure that I'm covering all of the lines because the last thing you want is a little blue outline around your photo. This way it basically just saves you having to zoom in and zoom out and do each photo individually because this is basically in economics, we call it specialization, so you're just doing one task at a time. I used the dimensions of a Polaroid as shown on the screen here. But there are so many different types of Polaroids, including the square Polaroid. I thought I would run with you the process of how I actually made the Polaroid template in the first place. All you need is a Word document and then you have to just insert shapes as your outline. For example, with the square Polaroid, the dimensions are 86 millimeters by 71 millimeters on the outside and 61 millimeters by 61 millimeters on the inside with a perimeter of 12.5 millimeters from the inside square to the outside rectangle. I didn't actually measure that in perimeter, but I just used my eye and saw that it was equal on all three sides, I knew I was pretty good. Click, "Insert", then "shapes", then select the rectangle and stretch it to the correct dimensions that you want. On the screen it might say 7.1 centimeters by 8.6 centimeters. Then you know you got the right dimensions. Then insert the next rectangle but in this case it is a square inside of that and then align it. Click on format shape on the tabs at the top, and then remove the fill just to make it an outline. You can also change the color of the outline if you wish, it's normally blue, you can't change it to black if you like, but it doesn't matter too much because you're going to cut off that anyway. Once you've made one, you just need to control A, control C, and then control V, then paste as many as you can fit on one piece of paper, making sure that it's nice and space efficient you don't have loads of excess white around the edges because that is also a waste or photo printing paper. Then to insert your photos, go back to insert, then click "pictures" from file and select the ones that you want, either by control A on the folder that you have just downloaded from Google Photos or by clicking control and then command and highlighting specific ones that you want. Then just drag them into the file. Then again, just zoom into the screen and make sure that you're covering the outline with this because the photos are square. It's pretty simple it's just a one-to-one ratio. What I would recommend doing is cropping your photos before downloading them because you can crop them on Microsoft Word but they don't have an aspect ratio. You can just crop it to a square, it just saves time to do it beforehand. Another type of photo I like to create on my phone is using a photo editing apps like unfold or story art. I just collected all of my photos into this collage and it gave it this photo booth design, which is quite nice and retro and it's super efficient and easy to do. Sometimes they give you suggestions for filters that you could add to the photos to make certain colors stand out or you can add green or different textures to make it look a bit more odd. Then save it to your device or screenshot it, and save it to Google photos on your album or whatever iCloud you're using. I saved it to my Sardinia album and then I downloaded it with the rest of my pictures and just inserted on to that Word document. Google Photos is also free and it's great for Android and Apple users. But if you have a Mac and if you've got a phone, an iPhone, you can just use Bluetooth and AirDrop them. I've used about four different types of photo printing paper and they're all pretty similar. But you can find the HP everyday glossy paper on Amazon for about seven or eight pounds, and our printer is the HP Deskjet 3050A, J611 series, but it is pretty old. It's about maybe five or six years old. But I recommend if you are looking for a new printer to check out the HP Deskjets, which will have all of the same printing settings. When you go control P, you will change the media and quality to high. Either glossy photo printing paper or glossy premium printing paper, if you just do the normal settings and you print on plain paper, isn't as good. The quality just looks like you have printed on plain paper. The quality often of the photo isn't as clear. You want it to look like a real photo that's just come out of a photo booth. Also a little tip when cussing out photos, I would recommend investing in some heavy duty scissors not these cute little stationary ones. Because when you've got 30 photos to cut out, it will take you forever if you use these, it also can give you hand cramp as well. Also the most efficient way is to cut around the outside of all of the photos along the edges and then cut out each photo individually. This way, when you have cut out all your photos, you're only left with two pieces of paper rather than 10 little pieces of scraps which is such a pain to pick up and they get everywhere. I also do have an instax mini link, which is basically a printer that you can print out instax photos. The photos do come out like if you've just taken it with one of their cameras, but you've taken on your phone, so no one's blinking and it's not blurry, but it's still has the same effect as well as that you can choose to invest in the film that you buy rather than just printing on white paper, they have loads of different types. This one is the macaron, which is basically like a rainbow. They've also got metallic ones, they've got monochrome ones, it's just black and white photos come out. A quick recap. I know that was quite a lot of implementation. Step one, download the Google document offline. Step two, open up on Microsoft Word. Step three, insert your photos into the document, square them and resize them, and rotate them if necessary. Step four, print them and do not forget to change your printer settings in the media and quality section. Now you have learned how to make your own Polaroid pictures for a fraction of the cost. Let's move on to how to perfect your title fonts and improve your handwriting.
4. Perfecting Title Fonts: Titles are pretty important. They don't have to be funny or long, but they do have to be clear and set a theme for a page. They put the photos in context and they store a new chapter in your scrapbook. Not to put pressure on you to make a beautifully handwritten title, but hopefully, one of these seven ways will take your fancy and help you get going on creating a beautiful title. Let's start off with number 1. The first way that you could try and make a title is using dafont.com and some tracing paper. Now, a lot of people do know dafont.com, but it's basically a font website where you can find so many different types of handwriting, or you can find typed fonts. You can find comic fonts, you can find animal fonts, you can find all these different types of fonts, and it is well worth checking out their website and seeing which ones fit with the theme of your page and which ones catch your eye. If you don't want to stick down a title that you printed off from Microsoft Word, one way you can get around this is by using tracing paper, layering over that and going along the outline. Then what you have to do is just move the tracing paper where you would like it to go in your scrapbook, and then just go over again, pressing hard and you should get indentation on your book. Then you can just go over on the actual book with a pen and fill it in. I use the printed in some, always as a guidance sheet. Then I just went over it with a sharpie and just made it a little bit thicker, and I compared it to what the font look like online. However, if you don't trust yourself to do that, then use the font as a guidance, what you can't just do is just print that out and stick it on as it is. The clear sticker paper also acts as a protective shining covering, which is really nice. It means that there won't be any smudges. Now, another method that I do use a lot is using a label maker. This is a junior dimer. It's got this little close at the back which you can open up, and in here is where you put your label tape. You can get them in all different types of colors: so red, black, gold, pink, blue, green, any color that you like. Any color that goes well with a page is always good. I tend to prefer black because it will always be white embossed on something, and white and black is a strong contrast. Whereas if I was to get silver, it wouldn't come out as clearly potentially, so I've just stopped with black, gold, red, and blue. You can use it for any arts and crafts that you like. Labeling jobs is a very common thing to do with a label maker. A fourth method of titling is using stencils. I have recommended this to a lot of people before who say, "My handwriting is terrible, but I want it to look like I've written it myself." I would definitely recommend using stencils. One of them was actually creating a baby book. I recommended getting rather than cursive stencils, just like the children stencils, and it goes with the theme of the book. First word or first hair cut, and having it in that primary school form made sense. This stencil you can use again and again, and all you need is pen. Another thing that you can use again and again, these letters stamps. I saw them on Amazon for about 12 pounds, and I pick these ones up in Flying Tiger for three pounds, which is really good. They are quite big, so that's why they're perfect for titles, not necessarily for labeling Polaroid pictures, but the great thing about stamps is that you can get stamp pads in any color. I've got them in gold, black, blue, all colors that you like. That means it's very easy to fit it to the theme of your page. I love these because they create this old-fashioned vibe to a page. Also you don't just have to use these for scrapbooking, I've also use these for making cards to people or doing Christmas tags. These are very versatile, which is really good. Now, the sixth method that you could try is using stickers. Stickers are brilliant because again, you can get them to fit your page and your theme. I saw these form alphabet stickers in neon sheet, which is the same place that I get my photo corner stickers. I really like the gold in the pattern, and I had a background which goes exactly with this. I thought this would be the perfect way to title that page. However, of course, stickers can start to rack up and they can get a little bit expensive, but if you are feeling confident and would like to maybe start trying out some calligraphy for titles, then this is what I do. I actually have a proper guidance sheets from Meghan Rivera lettering. What I do is I have my quill and I just practice with it. You don't need a quill, I also have a Pentel ink brush which does the same thing. I will also link to you some other great teachers on Skillshare who are professionals at calligraphy, but the basics are that you are light on the upstrokes and heavy on the down strokes, and it creates this natural shadow. What I like about this guidance sheet is that it has the arrows on it, so it shows you how the movement goes and where to start. Of course, before you actually attempt to write on your scrapbook, give it a practice before you start. But what I did when I was younger, is I just bought a cheap fountain pen and then a few calligraphy heads, which were cheap as well, like a couple of pounds, and then I just would try out these different designs. You can do these cool swells to underlying photos, but also don't be disheartened if you can't do it at start, it took me a long time to get to grips with the motions of using that of pen. But another form that I do quite a lot, that I mentioned briefly before, was using a white pen to highlight and create shadows if you're writing in black, or if you are writing in white, then using a black pen to create shadows on just one side of the letter. It creates a nice 3D effect and it's really effective. A quick recap of the seven things that you can try it. Number 1, is using tracing paper with websites like dafont.com. Number 2, is using clear sticker paper with dafont.com. Three, using a label maker. Four, using stencils. Five, using stickers. Six, using stamps. Seven, using calligraphy. Don't forget to practice before you put it on the page.
5. Making Your Own Stickers: So now we've gone over how to title your pages, let's move on to making our own backgrounds and sticker embellishment. Negative space can be a very powerful tool. However, if your pages are looking bland and empty, and just like this could be anyone else's scrapbook, then you are in need of some detail, maybe a splash of color or at least a different texture. Buying stickers can be expensive and finding stickers that fit the theme of your page can be even harder. I've been a sticker holder for years, just collecting random stickers for that perfect occasion to use it in a scrapbook, but that is definitely a long game. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how easy it is to make your own backgrounds and stickers cheaply, but also make them look professional. Some of the paper packs that I have come from the shop, The Works, or from the online store stationary Pal. These are useful and can make the process a little quicker, however, it is hard to find designs that not only fit the theme of your page but aren't too busy or too boring. That's why making your own is a lot more rewarding and it's often less waste because you can fit it exactly to the size that you need. The key to backgrounds depends on how many photos you have. If you've got three or four small ones, then it's okay to go for a busier background that will add a bit more detail to your page. However, if you've got eight or nine Polaroids, you are going to want something that's a little bit more simple and won't detract from the photos, but instead it'll just complement them nicely. If you happen to find any prints or designs that you like lying around on some car that you got sent in a box, so for example, these cars that I got sent, the blue ones, I wanted to use them for my Sardinia pages, but because they are quite thick, it will make it a lot harder to stick. What I do is I actually rip them into two pieces of paper, not only making it thicker but also giving you more background to use. Rather than just having an A5 piece of paper, I now have an A4. It does take practice to do it and to know what pressure and speed you should be going at. The general rule of thumb is if you are pulling aside the side that you want and it's getting a little bit thin, then pull that side with a little bit more force. Or what you can do is go to a different corner and try again. Then you will meet somewhere in the middle, and then you just can rip them off in the middle together, and then you should be safe that way. You could also try ripping at different angles too. But the great thing about this, as if one side has a design on it and the other side is just plain white, do not get rid of that plain white, because that might just happen to fit in a little box. In the corner of your page, we can add on some detail about whatever your page is on. This then saves you having to rip up a nice piece of white paper. All you need is some sticker paper and printer with some ink cartridges. I have tried three different types of sticker paper. I've got brown craft paper, white matte paper, and clear sticker paper for backgrounds. The best one is the white mapped paper. The other two are better for stickers or embellishments, and the best place to check for backgrounds is Pinterest. I have created a mute board of all my favorite backgrounds that is public. You guys can go check that out and use the same background as me. What I do is I tend to search for things like blue background or pink aesthetic wallpaper. Using the word aesthetic in Pinterest just brings up all the best search items. I don't know why, but just always took the word aesthetic at the end and you'll get the nicest photos. Their algorithm is also really effective. As soon as you start saving or downloading photos, it will start recommending you ones just like that and it will save you so much time and effort searching. I download the ones that I want from Pinterest and I just put them onto a Microsoft Word document. Again, this is why it's really useful to have an A4 book because you can see exactly how much of the page it's going to take up and what it's going to look like when it's in your scrapbook. I then just print it normally on the plain white matte sticker paper. You could attempt to print it on normal plain paper and then glue it down with a glue stick. However, if you do that, I would recommend using craft-card rather than white plain paper because often the quality in the paper. It can sometimes look translucent or it can just look like it's wet with ink. If you're doing a background, creating sticker background is so satisfying because you can get the exact dimensions, and also peeling off the Giant sticker is a really wonderful feeling. When I search for stickers on Pinterest, what I often do as my theme followed by a vector. For example, a paw print vector or summer vacation vector. It just comes up with a high-quality photo. Also if you want a photo without any background, just add on a PNG at the end, and then it will just have a transparent background rather than white or pink or black. Or you can use vector websites like vector stock. They are free, high-quality, and often royalty-free. Reusable stickers, say for example stamps are brilliant because you can get them to just have outlines, and then you can fill in the outline of the flower if you stamp that, you can also again, fit it to the theme of your page by using the color ink that goes well with your photos and your backgrounds. These little cards I am going to stick and use on an Asian page that I do in my scrapbook. You might recognize them as being on the back of a calendar. Because in the back of a calendar every year, you will see the little high-quality, mini previews of what each month's photo will be. If you like the photo, you might as well cut off, save it, and then use it for a scrapbook page that fits the theme of that photo. A great place to buy stickers is off Etsy because there are so many graphic designers in every country selling their beautiful artwork worldwide. A quick recap. One, have a mix of busy and simple backgrounds for variety. Two, purchase some brown, white or clear sticker paper, and then use Microsoft Word to print out the stickers and backgrounds of your choice, and three, use stamps for reusable stickers and backgrounds. Now that we have learned how to find and make beautiful backgrounds and stickers, let's put this all together and create a beautiful holiday spread.
6. Capturing the Holiday Spirit: When you look back at your pages, you want to be transported back to that memory in place in time. Rather than just sticking your photos in a photo album, you have a chance to personalize the page and bring the atmosphere into that spread. Remember to think of your scrapbook as a storytelling tool, and something that a lot of people often overlook is their hometown. As I film this currently, we are in a global pandemic, so not much travel is happening. Therefore, I decided to create a Brighton page dedicated to all my memories I've got there. To bring that page to life, a great thing to add is 3D elements. For example, shells from the beach as Brighton has a public beach. Color schemes of a place are also really important, so Porto was a very blue place. A lot of my photos had blue in them and the background that I used was actually a bag that I got when I went shopping and that was blue, the postcard was blue. Maybe you could even use the colors of the flag. But something that is really nice is when someone who lives in that town says, "Wow, that page is like home," that is always a good thing. That's what you're aiming for here. Another way to make this page really special is to make it personal. Potentially having a handwritten note from your Airbnb host, or a cafe business card that is as decorative and as beautiful as the place that you went, or maybe it just holds personal value, because it was your favorite meal out. For example, on my Sardinia Page, we went to this ice cream shop every night, so I decided to stick that in. This comes with practice. The more pages you do, the more comfortable you'll feel with sticking to a color theme on a budget. Similarly, just remember, every page is a work in progress. You don't have to finish the page that day or even that month, it can be an ongoing thing. When you come back to a page after a couple of months of scrapbooking, you'll think, I maybe could improve on that and you can add things to that page, or you might even end up going back to that place that you traveled to, picking up some more memorabilia and then adding it to that page. Don't feel the pressure that it has to be perfect within one sitting. Now those key things in mind, let's get started on creating a page. One of the first places I look to for inspiration is Pinterest. I have uploaded every page in my scrapbook on my Pinterest for you guys to get some inspiration. I have also found some great layout examples, highlighting the importance of negative space and symmetry. Say for example, this one, there are two designs on here that I really like the look of and I like the idea of splitting my book into four columns as such, so I decided to go with this when doing my Sardinia Page. Think of this page as a mood board that you might find on Pinterest, or even in the local tourist office of that place that you went to. From there use those colors and those 3D items, so from feel and sight can take you back to that place. For my Sardinia 2020 Page, I am starting with a blue theme. There was water everywhere, blue skies all the time. I wore a blue dress one evening, it also matched the color of the business card that I picked up. I also kept the patisserie casing that our favorite patisserie place would use. We'd always get these pistachio profiteroles choux pastry balls, and we could get coffee one and my dad always get the lemon one. I kept that because it was blue and I really liked the swans on it, thought was quite graceful. That way, I didn't have to print off any extra backgrounds and it was really personal. Use my blue backgrounds, and then layering on the photos and the title and the comments, I'm just seeing what works best using symmetry. I ended up actually having two spreads of Sardinia in my scrapbook. I've never done a two double-page spread, but ended up having so many photos. I thought what I do is I'd actually mirror what I did in the first page, on the second page, and just change about the symmetry slightly so it was the opposite. I felt that was quite effective, because it ties the two pages together in a sense. The time-lapse might make it look quite simple and quick, but in all honesty, it takes me about an hour to design a page, stick it all down and write the commentary and the titles, so don't be fooled. A quick recap of this lesson. One, make sure that you use 3D elements to bring the pages to life. Two, use a color theme to keep it cohesive and remind you of the streets of the place that you are at. Three, make it personal. Four, remember it's a work in progress and you can always come back and add more stuff later. Five, put all the creations from the previous lesson that you've made onto the page. Now, we have learned how to make a page dedicated to your holidays and your trips abroad. Let's try and make a page for your pets or your favorite people in your life.
7. Designing Pages Dedicated to People & Pets: When times like a global pandemic hit and you're short on holiday photos or inspiration because you're not meeting up with friends or family, creating dedicated spreads to pets and people is such a lovely thing to do. For pages dedicated to people, one of my spreads I did to my grandparents, I used old disposable photos to fit my dated theme I had going on. Another way to do this is by ripping up old books that you can find entirety shocks or any of your books that you don't read anymore. I also used my stamp kit to stick down the photos using sealing wax. Now, I wouldn't say I use this much for scrapbooking but this is an incredibly cool gadget. I mainly got it for pen pal usage. But it was definitely worth the 10 pounds I spent because it is incredibly satisfying to press this stamp down into hot melted wax and then peel it away. Depending on your style, you could go for more minimalistic look if that suits the person you're dedicating the page to. Say, for example, with my sister I made a page full of origami envelopes, that's really simple rather than having lots of photos on display. I thought it was a bit more special to put the photos in and you can take them out and that way is like each envelope has its own little photo album. But my sister is very much into origami and being half Asian, I thought this paper was perfect. It was actually an old calendar of mine. I ripped off the months that I thought suited her best and then I just use a simple concertina to make the envelope shape. You could pick the person's favorite colors or maybe use an old letter that person wrote to you with their handwriting on it. In each envelope I stuck a photo that reminds me of her or something that she loved, and then I wrote on the back a little description about it rather than writing around the edges because I thought that would be a little bit too messy and we can contradict from the minimalist feel. Pages dedicated to animals are really simple. Getting paper with poor print or a similar animal is really effective. Also with my book being brown craft paper, it's really effective just to draw some black poor prints, or we can do it in why or just do both and create shadow effect, that's quite cool. Creating items like an old color or their favorite toy or their blanket to make the page feel like the home of your pet is really lovely. My sister kept the baby teeth of my dog, Demsome, and so she suggested I could stick that on my book. I'm not sure. I think about it see where it goes. Similarly, on my page, I have a picture of Demsome in a field of white flowers. Something that would be quite nice to add the 3D element to the page would be to press some flowers and then stick those on. Pressing flowers is super simple. You just cut off the head while they still have some color in them before they die. The trick is just to get between two paper towels so that it soaks up all the water, so you don't get a moldy dried flower and then cover it with a really heavy book, like a cookbook or an old catalog or something like that and leave it for a few days. It's definitely worth the way and it adds a nice texture. They're really beautiful, and they add life to a page. It represents a frozen point in time. Maybe for a person you could do their favorite flower or their favorite color. Again, let's start off with the backgrounds and then just layer up with the photos and the stickers. You don't just have to draw the poor prints. But something my mom does for all of our birthday cards is she'll get the dog to walk on the card after a long muddy walk before she gets it all cleaned off and washed. That way it is like your dogs aren't tuple. Remembering someone and showing him the pages that you've created about them is priceless. These are also perfect if you want to create a mini scrapbook for your partner or your mother for Mother's Day and give it a little special collage or timeline of your favorite memories. A quick recap. Number 1, use a color scheme. Whether that's their favorite color or it's the predominant color in your favorite photo of them. Number 2, use photos that match their character. Whether that's minimalistic or vintage for grandparents, and you can always add effects onto photos to make things look a little bit more vintage with grain effects and filters. Number 3 is to use 3D things to bring that page to life. Whether that's their favorite flower or some plants from your dog's favorite walking spot or whether it's a pin badge that represents your friend really nicely. Now we've learned how to scrapbook for pets and people. Let's go over how to be resourceful when scrapbooking. Don't bend those grasp you've got.
8. Resourceful Scrapbooking: If you are trying to save money while scrapbooking, being resourceful is often not only good for the planet, but also good for your pocket. It's slowly learning to not bin stuff, and keeping things like old birthday cards, deflated balloons, wallpaper or paper bags, table cloths, old wrapping up paper. All you have to do is have a little box, or a folder where you store these things in. Then when a scrapbooking session comes along, you've got a whole load of scrapbooking supplies that are free, and that otherwise would have just gone in the bin. Learning an efficient way to store your scraps is so useful, not only because you're less likely to lose them, but also because then you're less likely to bin them. I keep a little folder of all scrap paper stored in the ROYGBIV method. Before, I used to have this wicker basket, and I used to just chuck everything in it, and I didn't know where anything was. The problem would be that I would just start cutting into brand new white paper when that was completely unnecessary, or when I had an exact design that I hadn't used, I'd only half used. Then I've got loads of paper everywhere. ROYGBIV means that I keep my red, orange and yellows together, the greens together, then the blues and purples together. This makes it so much easier to stick to a color theme of a page. I then have another folder with patent themes in them, for example Christmas or Easter, and I just title them using a sharpie because it's really easy to rub that off, either with tea tree oil, or with rubbing alcohol. When I rip off corners, they magically seem to fit in the spaces that I need them to fit in, but on the other side of the page. I don't know why, it must be the dimensions of my book to the 12 inch by 12 inch, but basically do not bend those, and if there's anything smaller that you can't write on, then put that in the recycling. Also, this goes without saying, whenever you are cutting into paper, do not cut into the center of the paper, play Tetris, and start from the outward edges, then work your way in. Another thing that's really versatile is these film strips that you get if you ever develop a disposable camera. When I was younger, I used to go through four or five of these a year. These photos are terrible if you're actually to ever print them, but they add a really nice retro effect. These would be quite nice next to the photos that I make on the app for my phone, or on the pages with my grandparents. That would have been a nice little addition. Also, as soon as you start doing this, you will realize that your friends and your family will start giving you more things that they think, "Oh, this is really beautiful. You might be able to use it in a scrapbook." For example, my flatmate yesterday gave me this lovely Hotel Chocolat bag, which has this Christmas scene at the bottom. She also gave me some old wrapping up scraps, which is actually perfect for blue see page. Then you might have noticed in the [inaudible] page, but I was using these little cards which I ripped off. They were from a book delivery, and would've just gone in the bin, or they would have just been recycled, but this way at least they're getting another use, and they are beautiful. It makes the page not only more personal, but also cheaper, and you'll soon start to realize that you're binning a lot less, and you're becoming a lot more creative with the ways that you're designing your pages. It's a great skill to have, not just when scrapbooking, but in loads of other aspects of your life. Learning how to upcycle little things not only saves money, but it is also a fun little project for you to have. Hopefully, throughout the lessons you've been picking up on the little tricks like using flowers that would otherwise die, or having train tickets that would otherwise be binned or recycled, using old tear from clothes, that would otherwise be sent to landfill, is also really creative. It's a great way to reduce your waste, and also to create beautiful things. You're saving the planet and your pocket at the same time. But remember it does take time to build up these new habits of saving things and being savvy with what you've got, so don't put pressure on yourself if you think, "Oh, I wish I kept that." At least you know for next time. A quick recap. One, find a storage method that suits you, whether that's by color or by pattern, you choose. Two, pick up the free things like business cards, maps, leaves from your favorite tree, but remember to mod podge them so that they don't go crusty, then fade and die. Three, bin or recycle things that are smaller than a 50 p coin and you know you won't be able to write on them, keep everything else. Now you've learned the key concepts of how to be a resourceful scrapbooker, now let's go over how to add in pages, envelopes, and folders into a scrapbook to store extra memorabilia.
9. Adding in Pages or Envelopes to Your Scrapbook: Sometimes when you're in the zone and you're scrapbooking away, you can easily get carried away and completely forget a whole section or you realize that you can't fit everything on your double-page spread and you can't go onto the next page because you've already used that, or you just want everything to fit on one page. Then this is the perfect opportunity to add in an envelope or even a whole page. This technique is not only useful in scrapbooking, but also with any book that has a ring binder, so including my university revision notes. There are three methods that you can use to do this, and the first one is using these little clips from Clipmatic. For example, on one of my holiday pages in France, I wanted to add in a set of painting that I did of a street. This big clear square here is sticky and you just stick that on the page that you want and in the hooks, we'll hook into your ring binder. I've also done this a lot with envelopes in my scrapbook, just because sometimes the envelopes I have are quite big and I don't want them to take up that much space on a double-page spread, so adding them in is also quite nice and quite fun. Also, going back to the painting, a lot of people have asked me if I am doing painting, how can I stop it from smudging? Depends on the media that you're using. But what I would do with chalk pastels is always hairspray it to stop the dust from transferring, or what you can do is use tracing paper and then use these little clips and stick them into the book. It will stop whatever media you've got on one side, sticking to the other side. Either that or you can use acetate, which is basically like giant sticky cellophane. It creates this really nice, shiny effect over your pages. It also means that it's waterproof. I have seen some people try it with sellotape, but you can often see the lines and the strips of the sellotape and I'm not sure how that affects the ink of the photos. I would personally recommend acetate if you're doing that or tracing paper. Another technique is to use a hole punch and scissors. All you have to do is mark out where your binders were to touch on the page using a pencil first, then you hole punch out the circles, and then cut along them so that you can then fit the page into the binders. This at first might take a little bit of time and a little bit of practice, but it's free. Another way is to use sellotape or glue. For example, on my Brighton page, I wanted to keep my postcards that I got from Brighton, their so beautiful. They're using a special form of lithography, chromolithography. What I did is I just glued the little flap on the envelope, not the whole back, not the whole front because I liked having the front design on it. That means you can flip it up and then take the stuff out and then flip it back down. The same with sellotape when you are using this, just make sure that the piece of sellotape is shorter than the length of the envelope. So it's still stuck down, but you can still flip it back and forth. I have also spoken about the importance of negative space before so if you've got things that you want to keep, but you don't want your pages to be too overcrowded, then creating a folder at the back of your scrapbook is the perfect thing to do. I have done this with all of my old school books and with my scrapbook, because it's a great way to keep things that are relevant to you, but not necessarily a specific page. For example, festival bands or tickets from a special day out, but you don't want to create a whole spread full, but still hold memories and you'd like to keep, check it in the back folder. If you are on your last page and you only need one more page to finish off that spread, or if you've been sent a beautiful envelope with stamps that perfectly fit the theme of one of your pages, then hopefully, this lesson has told you how to add them in. Adding in folders is a perfect way to store memories of things that are really special to you, but are potentially to creased to be on show or you don't want them to be on show because they're too personal. Having a folder, is the perfect place. A quick recap. Number 1, use Clipmatic clips to add in extra pages or envelopes. Number 2, use the hole punch or the scissor method. Number 3, use sellotape or glue. Number 4, you can use acetate or tracing paper to protect your artworks and keep your pages waterproof. Number 5, add a folder at the back of your scrapbook to store extra memories. Now we've gone over how to add pages, envelopes, and folders into your scrapbook. Let's go over the best methods of storage for your scrapbook.
10. The Best Ways to Store, Display or Share Your Scrapbooks: Now, after all of his hard work of creating beautiful memories, you do not want it to go into the waste. It's important to store your scrapbook, to keep it looking as good as new for as long as possible. Hopefully, so that you can show your children in the future, or at least to look back on in 10-20 years time. This is also another reason why you should get an A4 scrapbook and not a bigger one because that'll be even harder to store. Albums and scrapbooks should be stored standing up and not flat because this keeps the pressure off of the pages. Also, make sure to protect your scrapbooks from excessive exposure to sunlight. If you're going to be having your scrapbooks on display, the direct sunlight can actually bleach the colors and make the photos fade, so try to keep them somewhere out of direct sunlight, or even better, in a box. Boxes are really good to stop dust getting in. But if you do look for box, look for an acid-free one and do not forget to label it so that when you come back to it in the future, you know what was inside the box. Another thing to be careful of is temperature control, so you don't want anywhere that is too cold, for example, in the basement; or somewhere that gets really hot in the summer, in the attic. I know that that is quite a luxury to have the space to keep it in your living room or bedroom or study. I currently do have mine in the loft, but I'm hoping in the future, when I have more space or a study, I will be keeping and storing mine in there. This one is also a very simple one, but just be careful of other hazards. For example, keeping them away from vents, radiators, portable heaters, and any areas that are prone to leaks, insects or rodents. A quick recap. Make sure that you keep your scrapbook standing upright and not lying down to keep the pressure off the pages. Two, if you have an acid-free box, then store your scrapbooks spine down; this will reduce your chances of things falling out. Protect your scrapbooks from excessive light, and also be very careful with temperature control. Now, you've learned how to store and display your scrapbooks, and I hope you are happy with the creations you have made.
11. Conclusion: You've made it. Well done on completing all the classes on scrapbooking. I know it's a lot to take in, so feel free to go back to any previous class and timestamp any important things that you'd like to go back to. But in summary, the most important design aspects are color schemes and layout designs, where simplicity is key. Your photos and memorabilia will do all the talking. Don't feel pressure to finish your pages. There are many spreads in my book that have taken me over three years to complete. For example, my university page has taken so long. But it's really rewarding, and it should be a fun thing to do, not a stressful thing. But most importantly, just enjoy making memories that will last a lifetime. It's just great that you've taken the time out to learn more about scrapbooking. Hopefully, these classes will help you make beautiful memories that are timeless. I can't wait to see your designs. I wish you all the best in your creative process. It's now time to knuckle down and set those two hours aside to get relaxed and get in the zone of creating. It's goodbye from me, but if you do have any questions, feel free to get in touch via the Skillshare comments and I will help you. Enjoy.
Mei-Ying Chow, Content Creator // Scrapbooker
