Your whole life is a mosaic of all your interactions with the people you meet, a collection of the experiences you gained, and fragments of memories that you’ve accumulated over time. But all these are intangible and living inside your mind unless you conjure them in physical form.
That’s why scrapbooking can be considered as one of the best inventions of humankind. In essence, scrapbooking is just a method of preserving history in visual manifestations such as pictures, artworks, and other memorabilia. But what makes it more meaningful is the fact that you can include your personal touch to the craft.
There’s no one way to make a scrapbook; the design, style, and material will all depend on your personal preferences. It’s also important to note that scrapbooks can be used for anything—they can act as your autobiography, a record of a momentous period in your life, or even for something impersonal that you want to immortalize.
In the digital age, scrapbooks can be likened to those of collages or photo albums uploaded on social media. There’s nothing wrong if you prefer using digital mediums to create your craft, but there’s just something special about the textures and feelings of holding an actual scrapbook in your hands.
As mentioned earlier, scrapbooking has no stringent rules that you need to follow, but some materials are integral to making the craft. It would be impossible to scrapbook without these five materials, so make sure that you have them on hand before you start your crafting journey:
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Foundation
Before you can make any progress with your scrapbook, the most important thing that you have to do is lay the foundation — your scrapbook’s base. This can be a sturdy binder or an album large enough to fit everything you want to include in your scrapbook.
Remember that the point of scrapbooking is to preserve your memories, so your foundation should be built for durability. It also has to be able to protect your precious pages inside because otherwise, it would serve no purpose other than being a flimsy cover.
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Pages
After laying the grounds of your scrapbook, the next thing you need is to establish your background: the pages. Usually, scrappers use thick cardstock papers or cardboard for their pages because they are more durable than bond papers. The thickness of your pages will be telling of how sturdy your finished product will be.
If you want to choose a more sustainable option, you can also make use of recycled paper or old magazines for your pages. This can be a useful hack because you would already have a design, but you just have to make sure that your pages will be strong enough to support the weight of your content.
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Memorabilia
A scrapbook will be meaningless if it doesn’t contain any photos, printed cutouts, artworks, or other memorabilia that you want to preserve because the purpose will be defeated. After all, you’re scrapbooking because you want to have a visual and tangible account of your favorite memories.
The possibilities of what you can put inside your scrapbook are limitless. Anything and everything you want to preserve will count as memorabilia, even if it’s just the packaging of your favorite snack as a kid. As long as it’s flat and two-dimensional, it will find a perfect home inside your scrapbook.
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Design
You have now arrived at the most enjoyable part of your scrapbooking journey: designing the pages. If you think that you’ll go crazy with fixing the memorabilia on the pages, then you’ll lose your mind with the sheer amount of design ideas you can have while decorating your scrapbook.
Embellishments like stickers, stamps, fabrics, beads, felt cutout, and ribbons are only the beginning of what you can use to decorate your pages. If you feel like making your pages sparkle, you can also use craft glitter brushes to highlight the moments that you felt as if you’re shining like a diamond in the sky.
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Tools
Of course, to actually put the entire thing together, you would need to have the right tools to make it possible. This will include your choice of adhesive, such as various tapes or glues, your plain and decorative scissors, your colorful markers and pens, as well as other special crafting tools.
Once you begin scrapbooking, you might find it that much difficult to stop because it’s so enjoyable. You can get lost in your own little world when you put your hands to work while you go down memory lane. Plus, it’s a fun way to spend time and free your mind from your adult responsibilities, even if it’s just for a little while.
Meta title: Get These Five Materials and Discover the Joys of Scrapbooking
meta desc: Scrapbooking is arguably one of the best ways to relieve stress and reminisce memories at the same time. Discover how you can start your scrapbooking journey with these five materials.