Scrapbooking - Lake Park,GA

First, I would ask some questions:

Do you have a large family or small (that would affect how many books you're going to be doing)?

Do you have a craft room or area where you can spread out projects and store supplies or where toddlers can't get at your pages (if you don't, maybe you want to do digital scrapbooks)?

Do you enjoy (or want to learn) cutting, pasting, decorating and planning traditional paper pages, or do you want help designing pages? If you don't enjoy coming up with pages of your own design and creation, maybe digital pages where they're pre-designed and you can just drop in your own photos is the way to go.

Do you have a computer?

Will other family members (grandparents, etc) want copies of your scrapbooks or are you just going to make memory books for your kids?

Once you've thought about those questions, go to www.creativememories.com and click on "help zone" in the far upper right corner. There you'll find videos and tutorials that talk about digital scrapbooking and paper scrapbooking.

For traditional albums where you paste photos in, you'll need photo-safe tape (available through Creative Memories or at Hobby Lobby or other craft stores), pages, and a way to cut photos. They sell small cutters that help you cut straight edges. Cutting a photo is called "cropping" (you'll hear that word a lot). You can crop a photo to fit a space, or crop something out of it. You can also crop a photo digitally. Creative Memories software allows you to scan a photo into your computer, remove unwanted parts, sharpen out-of-focus faces, and make the photo larger or smaller, etc.

The other word you'll hear is "journalling". When you journal, that just means writing in the book. If it's a page about the birth of a baby, you might journal something like "you were born at 5 in the morning and Mommy and Daddy were so overjoyed to see your face", underneath the first photo of the baby in the delivery room, etc.

Good luck! I do paper scrapbooks, but I am getting to be a pretty serious digital scrapbooker. I have done a digital book, and then I submit it online to Creative Memories, and they print it and mail it to me. Please feel free to ask me any questions.

I've been scrapbooking for almost 20 years. I take alot of pictures and I have about 25 large oversized albums already. I had to stop b/c I have nowhere to store them. They are SO wicked heavy and bulky. So, with that in mind, I HIGHLY suggest digital scrapbooking b/c they aren't heavy and you can put more photos on them.

As far as starting, just start w/basic pages - photo, info on the photo, maybe a few pages of pretty paper in the background or just slap on a few stickers. Once you get used to the trimming, writing, and page arranging, then you can start on the mega page decorating and creative arragements that you see in all the examples.

gl and hf!

If there is a Michaels, Joanns, or Ben Franklin near you they offer scrapbook classes. You can also look to see if there are any Creative Memories people around you. All you need to start is some paper, glue, and a scrapbook and cutting implement. I would go to Joanns and get one of the 12x12 stacks of paper, a mat stack 6x4 to go with it to mat your photos on, a paper cutter, scrapbook tape to stick your photos with, stickers and a photo album. Then let your imagination go. You can search sites for ideas on pages to do. Have fun!

I personally, am not a scrapbooker but if you put "scrapbooking" at the top right of the home page search engine you'll fine more answers than you know what to do with. Have a Happy TG!!!

Find a Creative Memories consultant. I used to be one but not anymore. They have the best albums and materials in my eyes!

I think the most important decision you need to make at the beginning is what sixe scrapbook do you want to do. Do you want to use regular 3 ring binders? Do you want to use small purse size booklets? Do you want to go all out and buy the post ones that have the 12"X12" pages in them. I started out thinking the 3 ring binders would be great, they are cheap, page protectors are easy to find, etc...I hated each and every page I did, finally I bought my first post one with the larger pages and haven't looked back.

So, once you decide what size you want to do, if the first one will be a smaller one just to see what your style is, etc...then you can start with the supply buying.

In my honest opinion and from my personal experience I went to as many websites as I could and looked at their layouts because I was inexperienced and not very creative. I jotted down the details of the ones I fell in love with and then used them when I was starting to form my style and how I wanted to tell the story of my pictures. I have several with bug themes for my grandsons. One of my favorites is the oldest sitting and leaning onto a stuffed frog. I had stickers of frogs on a tape measure and I labeled the picture "growing by leaps and bounds". It was so easy due to the photographer using a prop that I matched to a page of stickers and borders at Hobby Lobby.

Find out if any of the scrapbooking stores in your town have "crops" where people meet together and do a page while sitting around and possibly having a class on some new product or cutting tool. They are fun and should not be very expensive unless you get a lot of food along with the class.