Theme Ideas For Your Scrapbook

Whether you're new to scrapbooking or an old pro, coming up with ideas for a new album is not always easy. Here we'll talk about different ideas and how organizing your photos will help determine the theme of your next scrapbook.

Here are some album ideas you can use; and looking these over may spark some other ideas of your own.

• Travel Scrapbook: You can create an album from photos of you and your family while traveling. You may have enough photos from one specific trip to complete a small album, or you can combine several trips into one larger album. If you travel a lot, you might like to do an album called "On the Road in 2009" for example.
• School age children's events: If you have kids in school, an album of their different activities is a good way to store and display those memories. You may want to have one album for each year with all your children, or you may want to have different albums for each child throughout the years.
• Antique Album: An antique style album is great for old black and white photos you may have lying around in a box or the basement.
• Seasonal album: Perhaps you have lots of pictures during the different seasons. You could create an album with all your fall pictures using earth tones and fall colors and themes.
• Children's artwork: Do you have tons of your child's artwork plastered to your fridge or in a box somewhere? Get it out, sort it by year and create an album using the different pieces. You can use it for backgrounds, decorations or maybe even embellishments. Incorporate pictures of your child from a specific year with the artwork.

Now that your wheels are spinning with ideas for your next album, let's talk about photo organization. Organizing your photos is a great way to get ideas for albums as well. As you sort through the boxes and packets of pictures you have, you'll start to get ideas for an album.

There are, of course, many different ways you could organize your photos, so I'm just going to give you a few ideas to get you started.

• Chronologically: If you have piles and piles of photos in boxes, or photos in old albums that aren't acid and lignin free, take them out and start sorting them into stacks by the year. If your photos aren't date stamped on the back or front, try to determine the year they were taken by the ages of the people in them, the style of clothing, the location or event where the photo was taken. You may find you have hundreds of photos for each year and will need to break it down further by season or event.
• By event: As you're sorting chronologically, you'll probably come across photos from certain events that would make for a nice album or two such as: a trip, a wedding, birth of a new baby, a play or other theatrical event, a concert or a family outing.

Once you have your photos sorted and organized, store them in plastic baggies to keep the air out. This will help preserve them until you can get them into an acid and lignin free album. Be sure to mark each bag by year or event so when you go back to make the album you know which baggie to grab.

To add color and fun to your pages, learn more about the use of scrapbooking embellishments

Cheap Scrapbooking Supplies - 5 Awesome Tips to Scrapbook on a Budget

Scrapbooking can be an expensive hobby, specially if you make it a habit of looking around scrapbook stores. There are so many beautiful papers and embellishments that's sometimes it's just too hard to keep from adding them to your shopping basket.

But the good news is you don't have to spend a lot of money to practice your favorite hobby! After some years of compulsive shopping I've come to terms with my wallet by following these simple guidelines:

Use Your Old Supplies

You may not realize, but you probably already have most of what you need to complete your next project. We tend to accumulate lots of stuff over the years. We buy papers and embellishments we don't really need because they're so cute and we'll think of something to do with them in the future. Then we forget about them. So check around your stash and I'm sure you'll find some great unused and forgotten treats.

Don't Forget Those Scraps

Remember that gorgeous paper you used some time ago? I'll bet there are some scraps left. You can use those to create small embellishments, like stripes or photo corners. If they're big enough you can cut shapes or maybe even words.

Re-Use and Recycle

Don't throw away those wrapping papers just yet! Check to see if there are pieces you can use for your scrapbook. Look for sections that are not torn or wrinkled to use as background or photo frames. Or use a puncher to get colored and patterned shapes to use as embellishments.

Look Around Your Home

I'm sure you'll be surprised at how many "scrapbooking" supplies you'll find laying around your house. There are always old greeting and birthday cards, calendars, paperclips, old envelopes and a plethora of buttons and ribbons just waiting to be turned into beautiful page accents. Think creatively, and anything can become an embellishment: from broken jewelry to clothing tags. You can paint them, dye or cover them with scrap paper. Only be careful so items that are not acid-free won't touch your photos.

Team-up With Your Friends and Buy in Bulk

If you are on a budget, wholesale is the way to go. Some scrapbookers feel discouraged of buying in great quantities for fear of not using all the supplies. In this case it may be a good idea to get together with your friends and make a list until the order is large enough.

As you can see, scrapbooking doesn't have to be an expensive hobby. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that can be painted or altered into an awesome embellishment and you'll save tons of money.

If you liked this article check out this post for more creative ways to scrapbook on a budget with cheap scrapbooking supplies.

How to Enhance Your Layouts With Shells & Rocks

When it comes to creating the perfect scrapbook, there are many opportunities available to you. You can use objects from around your home or from your vacation or trip to enhance your layouts.

One great example of this is shells or rocks. Of course, you have to use smaller ones to fit inside your layouts but they can be readily found on the ground and they can be a beautiful addition to your scrapbooks.

This is an idea I originally thought of because children love to pick up rocks and seashells from the ground and bring them as gifts to moms and dads. You see children of all ages do this and it made me think about how it may just be a rock to someone else, to the child it's special. Because of this, it becomes special to the parent, too because it was a gift from a child.

This is why items like this are so great at enhancing your layout - because they have sentimental value as well - which is what scrapbooking is all about anyway. If you're going to use these items to enhance your layouts, the first step is to collect them.

You will want to have some type of storage system so that you can keep track of these small items until they get used. Then you want to have some type of adhesive to attach them to your scrapbook. Scrapbooking adhesive or glue is your best choice because you know it will preserve properly over time and not do damage to your scrapbook.

Items that are too large won't fit on inside pages very well but they can be used for covers to make your scrapbook more personalized and more fun. Make sure if you place any rocks or shells on the inside they do not squish into photos on the other side when you close your scrapbook. Some people also choose to coat them with a clear varnish to make them smooth and prevent flaking and peeling.

To add color and fun to your pages, learn more about the use of scrapbooking embellishments. And while there, sign up to win a free Cricut cartridge.

Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants Cricut Cartridge

Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants Cricut cartridge includes fun and exciting images of Spongebob and his friends which you can now more easily cut and paste and use as design for your custom made scrapbooks. It is a package of bright and amusing pictures and letter fonts that pertains to Nickelodeon's longest running Nicktoon show next to The Rugrats.

For the customer's excitement and delight, this cartridge has included the following features that let you choose from a wider variety of Spongebob icons: Body/Detail 1, Outfit/Detail 2, Eyes/Detail 3, Icon, Icon Layers, and Shadow creative features.

These very special features can only be found when you buy Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants cartridge by Cricut. This package has been enjoyed by buyers, especially to children who love Spongebob Squarepants because they can now easily create and cut his likeness without the use of computers.

With only one click of Cricut's button, the compact cutting machine will do everything you want to do from accurate and artistic cutting to producing the icons exactly how you like them to be.

In addition to this, this cartridge also contains lots of different cool shapes and letters. His friends' shapes and images are also available such as Patrick Star, Squid Q. J. Tentacles, Sandy Cheeks, Eugene H. Krabs, Sheldon J. Plankton, Gary, and many, many more!

You can now cut out letters, names, and fun phrases exactly the way you see them on TV while watching your favorite Nicktoon show. Not only that, they are also available in the precise colors and layouts the way they are shown on TV.

The Spongebob Squarepants Cricut Cartridge is designed for children who want to make not only scrapbooking projects, but also greeting cards, paper crafts, beautiful designs, artistic alphabets, home or room decors, and a lot more using pictures, logos, and signs from the Spongebob series.

Those who still want to purchase a Spongebob Squarepants Cartridge are advised to do so as soon as possible. Cricut has been receiving thousands and thousands of orders because of the popularity of Spongebob amongst children and youngsters.

Making Money With Free Printables For Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is a hobby which is very popular throughout the world especially in USA. People like to make beautiful and unique scrapbooks which they can share and enjoy for years to come. They have their best memories in store in the form of a scrapbook so they don't mind spending money on it.

Scrapbooking itself is a huge industry. People who make scrapbooks are always in search of new ideas, layouts, printables and designs to make and decorate their scrapbooks.

There is a big market for scrapbooking supplies and already there are people making really good money selling stuff related to scrapbook making and decorating. Search a product site like eBay and you will know how big the market is.

If you want to take up scrapbooking is a business, you can start it up as a regular business or an online business. With a little bit of research you can combine your online activities to expand on your scrapbooking business.

Once you have a client or customer that buys these supplies, the chances are that he will need them regularly thereby increasing to your sales. What you need here is the client database, in other words, the information about people who make scrapbooks and buy all kinds of scrapbooking materials.

One of the simple techniques of making such a database is to distribute free stuff needed by such people. You can have a simple website where people can get new ideas, layouts, printables or designs for free in exchange of their name, e-mail ID or address.

This is one of the simplest ways you can get that client information and make a database giving away stuff which they need for free. These are the customers who are engaged actively into making and decorating scrapbooks and they also buy a lot of stuff for their craft.

You can always use this information to promote your business to these customers, there are ways to do this as well. The best part of a business like this is that you can come up with really creative ideas to promote your business and make money out of it.

This database can make you money many times over. Without making much of an investment you can have a profitable business running.

To know more about how to start a scrapbooking business you can visit the site on scrapbooking.