How to Create a Scrapbook With Only Four Supplies

Wonderful scrapbooks can be created with only four supplies; an album, adhesive, paper and a corner rounder.

I remember being invited to a scrapbook party. Inwardly I groaned. I still draw stick figures. I have never possessed artistic ability. I remember almost crying in school when we had to do an art project. I could envision great things, but I could not create them.

I?m a good sport and so I went to the scrapbook party. The gal giving the demonstration had a demo album. Inside were lots of pictures all beautifully arranged. Everyone was oohing and ahhing. Me, I was remembering those stick figures I was so good at drawing.

And then something magical happened. A light bulb went off and I realized that artistic was not necessary. Creativity was not even needed. All that was needed were some basic supplies and I too could create an awesome scrapbook.

Many photos were ?framed?. This simply means cutting a square piece of paper a little larger than the photo and attaching the photo to the paper. I could do this. Cutting and pasting was something that did not need an artist. This was actually fun. There are so many papers to choose from. You can mount photos on cardstock or directly on scrapbook paper.

When I discovered a corner rounder, I was worried there would not be enough photos for me to round. A corner rounder literally slices off a sliver of paper making the corner round instead of square. You can use a corner rounder on both the photo and also on the paper you are mounting the photo on.

If you did nothing else but put photos on paper and mounted them, some with the corners rounded, you?d have a scrapbook that looked really nice. If you have a 12x12 album and you put 5 photos on one page, you can arrange them any way you want. You can overlap some of the frames. You can line them up. You can put one photo in each corner and then a rounded corner photo in the middle. Again, we are using nothing but the photo and a frame. You can mix and match colors of the frames to make a really interesting looking page.

I have always used double sided adhesive squares to mount photos to the frames. I find these very easy to use. You put one square on each of the four corners of the photo, pull off the tab to expose the tape and then press the photo on the frame. You then put four more squares on your frame and attach the frame to the paper. If the photo is extra large, I?ll put eight squares on the photo instead of four, and another eight on the frame.

My very first album used only these four supplies, an album, adhesive squares, paper and a corner rounder. It?s an album I still cherish very much. You too can create a great scrapbook album with the same four supplies.

Audrey Okaneko has been scrapbooking for several years. She can be reached at audreyoka@cox.net or visited at http://www.scrapping-made-simple.com