Larry’s View

There are as many scrapbooking techniques as there are subjects to be scrapbooked. Most are relatively straightforward, a few are more involved. In either case, nothing is too difficult to learn if your goal is to create truly-unique scrapbooks to store, protect and display your keepsakes. Basic scrapbooking techniques are as simple as buying a suitable album in which to mount your treasured family photographs, to store stamp collections or hold rare coins. On the other end of the scale are highly-creative endeavors that are fabricated with templates, patterns and a wide range of embellishments. The newest of the scrapbooking techniques, called digital scrapbooking, combines the technological advances of the digital camera, scanner and personal computer into a system that has almost unbelievable sophistication.

Notwithstanding the scrapbooking techniques employed to create them, there are certain basic materials and supplies which one needs to get the job done These include: Albums, Papers, Adhesives and other mounts, photos, artwork or other graphic elements and designs, treasured keepsakes like invitations, ticket stubs, letters and other documents, locks of baby’s hair, and just about anything else from you or your family that represents a stage you’d like to remember. There are also embellishments like ribbons and die-cuts, colored pens and pencils, scissors and cutting devices, journaling pens and things used for cropping and matting. All of these things and more are used to provide a trip down memory lane that you can share with family members and friends.

Like any hobby or pastime, scrapbooking gets better with personal experience and there is a learning curve. However, when you consider that the hobby has grown from a single commercial store in 1981 into a multi-billion dollar industry with literally thousands of vendors in just 27 years, and with one out of every three American households containing an active scrapbooker, it’s easy to realize just how pleasurable and addictive it really is.

The various scrapbooking techniques used to create scrapbooks could fill volumes of how-to-do-it books. In fact, there are many such books on the market. It’s fortunate that scrapbookers who also own personal computers are privy to a very-extensive collection of info on these techniques as well as community-based websites where scrapbooking techniques are regularly shared amongst members and website visitors alike.

Scrapbooking is more than just an average hobby. For most devotees it is truly a labor of love hat provides them with an opportunity to chronicle entire family history between two or more album covers.