3. Save anything with names or pictures of places visited to use in your scrapbook. This page was made from the gift bag my postcard came in, much easier and cheaper than using stickers or chipboard for the lettering.
4. Use Magazine or newspaper clippings for lettering or other elements on your page.
5. Use stamps, stencils, or other reusable materials for lettering. I can't bring myself to buy stickers, chipboard and other fancy and expensive products for lettering. You use it once and then you have to buy it again. It just causes too much guilt for my practical, cheap lil' self. But I hate my handwriting so I bought some cheap letter stamps that I use frequently for my page titles and such. Stencils or typing on the computer are other cheap options I've used.
6. Collect scraps- tags, parts of cards, stickers, parts of gift bags, etc. It seems a shame that clothing tags are so cute and just get ripped off and tossed in the garbage. Save any tidbits that might have cute pictures, relevant words, pretty pieces of ribbon, whatever. Think outside the box and look for things you could use. Even the size/age tags on clothes could be useful in a baby book. And there's a kids clothing brand called "Emma's Garden" that I collect tags from to use in my daughter's scrapbook. Here's some examples of things I've saved in my scrapbox:
By the way these collections are great for card-making too. Collect cute pieces from different cards to make an original cute card of your own (maybe I shouldn't be admitting this to the people I receive and give cards to but I do put time and some of my own materials into them).
Well, that's just a few ideas I've come up with but I'd love to hear others. One thing I need to do is add more journaling to my pages. Any ideas on how to do that on old pages (keeping in mind my handwriting is not presentable)? What tricks do you use for making cute but inexpensive pages or cards? Or what's your alternative to scrapbooking ( I think blogging is part of the reason I've cut back)?
3 comments:
First of all, I am NOT a scrapbooker. I wanted to be one once upon a time. I even spent quite a bit of money gathering cutesy stuff from scrapbook stores in hopes of making them into scrapbook pages one day. Never happened. Never will. I have since given all my stuff away. So there's one reason to follow Gina's advice. If you never get around to making your pages, you won't be out a bunch of money if you've gathered only recycled items. :)
Although I refuse to scrapbook (it is too overwhelming for me), I do love making my own cards! And I do exactly what you mentioned. I tear off cute embellishments on cards or gift bags I've received and work them into blank cards that I buy in bulk. What I haven't thought about was some of the other means you mentioned (clothing tags, etc.). I'm going to keep a better eye out for that type of thing.
Another idea that I think fits into this topic...I had four 8x10 photos that I bought frames for. The mats were plain white and I wanted to spice them up a bit. I used an old magazine and tore/cut out different shapes in different colors and adhered them to the frames. I love how they turned out. I think I'll post about those later on my blog. But I loved that I could totally personalize my frames with an old magazine.
Finally (this is getting long), to answer your question about ideas for journaling...what if you typed up a story or thoughts or whatever and slipped it into the sheet protector behind the scrapbook page. Then when you went through your scrapbook, you could check for text inserts behind the pages. That way they would be with corresponding pages, but wouldn't be crowding the actual pictures and such on the page.
A couple others I forgot:
Reuse synthetic flowers as embellishments. Or buy the clearance ones at the craft stores.
If you're throwing away clothes (torn jeans, stained shirts, etc.) pull off any cute buttons, or pieces(felt flowers, pretty ribbons, whatever's salvageable)
Gina, what do you use to keep all these supplies organized? I've been collecting these type of things, but need a system so I know where they are when I need them!
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