Briseadh’s Crafting Corner: Scrapbooking 101
By: Althea “Briseadh” Damgaard
I got into scrapbooking when a coworker threw a scrapbooking party.
We learned how to make one page
with a few photos, some paper, and
a background sheet. Since that day,
I’ve made nine albums for myself,
one for my grandmother, and
another one is in progress. There
are still way too many pictures left
to work with.
Why Make A
Scrapbook?
Why bother making scrapbooks?
For one, it allows you to organize
your
pictures
and
record
information about them to pass
down to descendent’s. I know far
too many people with old family
photos, but no one knows who is in
58
the picture or the year it was taken.
A lot of family history is lost when
this happens. Those photos meant a
lot to someone, but the story is lost
without at least some information
to go with the picture. Even if you
label a picture with only the date,
location, and names of the people
in the photo, that will at least help
future generations know something
about it.
Secondly, I found it was a great
pastime and something to get
together to do with friends. We
swap a lot of ideas on how to share
our photos in our books. We also
discuss how to tell the story in the
pictures. This has helped several
people know what to write in the
scrapbook that the picture doesn’t
entirely tell. Photos just snap the
moment, but telling the story makes
it come alive. Life is to be shared
with others.
Getting Started
Scrapbooking
So how do you get started? There
are definitely two ways to scrapbook
these days. You can create an actual
album with paper and pages, or you
can do it digitally. The huge number
of choices of how to do either one
can make one’s mind dizzy. I will
give tips on the album side of things.
I find I like crafting scrapbooks with
printed pictures and paper because
many of the other things I like to do
are already computer-based.