Obviously, you’ll need a few straight edged scissors. You’ll need a pair of scissors with long blades – at least five inches – for large edges. I recommend having at least one straight edged pair of scissors which have nonstick or Teflon blades. If what you are cutting has any stray adhesive on it, the nonstick blades will repel that and won’t stick to your blades. With this type, you won’t have to clean the adhesive build up nearly as often as with regular blades. You will also need a pair or two of straight edged detail scissors. These scissors are small and will allow you to do fine cutting work with precision and accuracy.

Decorative edgers are definitely your friend when it comes to scrapbooking. With them, you can easily cut patterns and decorative borders, both which are excellent abilities when it comes to layering paper attractively on your scrapbook page. Similar to decorative edgers are corner edgers. If you want to give your scrapbook page a decidedly professional look, I recommend using corner edgers to trim the corners off all your mats, photographs, and paper layers.

Finally, there is the circle scissor. This is a complex tool comprised of plastic and a cutting pen. With one circle scissor, you can make up to 125 different sizes of circles. A cutting mat is a must under this tool. I especially recommend using a self-healing cutting mat for optimal results.

The Original Post is Located Here: The Wonderful World of Scissors

The scrapbooking album which offers you the most freedom is the expandable album. If you’re the type of person who likes to rearrange this, add a page there, or remove a section and put it in another album, then an expandable album will be the right choice album for your scrapbooking needs. You wils be able to take pages out, reorganize, or add sections at will. Just make sure that in an effort to save money you don’t fill your expandable scrapbooks past their recommended capacity.

For the more rigid types, I recommend the bound scrapbook album. If you want to add a more professional look to your scrapbooks, a bound album can definitely be the way to go, especially if you choose a leather bound scrapbook album. A cheaper option, but one that still looks professional, is to have spiral bound scrapbooks. An added bonus of the bound scrapbook type is that pages can’t be taken out and misplaced or lent and never returned.

But if you want to have a truly special scrapbook album, the only way to go is a specialty album. You can buy a kit and make a handmade album so that you get exactly what you want. You can add the extra feature of a wooden album cover, which would make your scrapbook look even more impressive.

Whichever way you go, make sure that you love your scrapbook album. If you are a dedicated scrapbooker, your album will be your companion to hold many great memories over the years.

The Original Post is Located Here: The Main Types of Scrapbook Albums

Obviously, protecting your scrapbooking pages is one of the key reasons that smart scrapbookers use page protectors on their work. Spills and tears are two big reasons that page protectors are important for your album. What you may not think of immediately is how damaging touching your scrapbook pages can be over time. Dirt and oils that naturally occur on hands are devastating to paper and photographs.

Despite their name, page protectors do more than protect. You can also use your page protectors creatively. If you’ve ever wanted to show off things like seeds from a garden or sand from a beech and didn’t want to glue each on, a handy way to display them is by using a page protector to fashion a shaker box. You can display just about anything like that easily and affordably by having a some page protectors at hand and ready to do your bidding.

Page protectors can also ensure that you don’t have to deal with troublesome dust after a few years. Dust is a natural enemy of scrapbook components, but the problem can be exacerbated if you have any adhesive residue on the pages. If you use page protectors faithfully, residue from removable or repositionable adhesive won’t collect dust.

Page protectors truly are the unsung heroes of the scrapbooking process. And since they’re so affordable if I were you, I wouldn’t try to scrapbook without them.

The Original Post is Located Here: The Importance of Adding Page Protectors

At first, it may seem like you would want to follow every practice that professional archivists use. After all, if it’s good enough for a museum, you think, it should be more than sufficient to make your scrapbook last for years and years. In reality though, what archivists use could come close to destroying your scrapbook. You see, archivists use natural adhesives like starches and wheat pastes. Over time, these natural adhesives encourage the growth of mold, if kept outside of a controlled museum exhibit. You wouldn’t want your prized scrapbook to mold, would you?

A common type of adhesive is rubber based. Rubber cement is one such example. While rubber cement, and other rubber-based adhesives, may seem permanent, in reality in time the different components of these adhesives can separate, leaving you with a scrapbook which literally comes unglued. Clearly, this is also not where you should be looking for a quality scrapbook adhesive.

The ideal scrapbook adhesive is an acrylic-based adhesive. These adhesives will not cause your scrapbook to grow things you wouldn’t want or dissolve over the years. When it comes to acrylic-based adhesives, though, you’ll find that you have a myriad of choices. I’ll help you navigate through those as well, as you will see later. Stay tuned!

The Original Post is Located Here: Sticking to the Right Kinds of Adhesives

First off, look for an album that has a slipcase (also called a slip cover). It’s rare that you can find a slip cover sold by itself, so you’ll need to look for it as a set with the album. Though this will cost you a little extra at first, a slipcase is one of the best ways to keep your precious scrapbook album safe from all the elements.

Look for signs of quality on the album. Is the stitching tight, even, and intact? Is the fabric torn? If it is a bound album, is the binding broken? Overall, does the scrapbook album look like it is in good condition? If you have any doubts, find another; normal use will only cause more wear and tear.

If you get a chance, smell the album. Do you smell anything like petroleum or linoleum? Petroleum-based products, even ones which are not touching the scrapbook pages, release gases which break down pictures and paper over time. Make sure your scrapbook album is free of petroleum and vinyl (a petroleum product).

If you already have a cheap scrapbook album, don’t despair. Cheaper albums, especially that are expandable, do have their place. You can use them to store pages that are only half finished. In this way, they can be an excellent way to store partially finished scrapbook pages that will go in your higher quality album.

The Original Post is Located Here: Some Tips to Finding a Quality Scrapbook Album

To be a power scrapbooker, you need to have supercharged organization resources. After all, unless you want to put together one scrapbook and then be done with the whole idea, you’ll probably be storing memorabilia, scraps, and photos from many years that will go into scrapbooks. When you add on top of that all the paper, cutting tools, and adhesives, you’ll really have a lot of materials that you’ll need to store. Staying organized is key to keeping your sanity and an important part of any successful scrapbooker. In this article, we’ll take a look at a couple of winning ideas for scrapbook organization.

If you like to get creative and be flexible with your organization, you can visit home organization stores like Ikea or the Container Store for modular home-storage. You can fairly easily adapt these home storage units to your scrapbooking needs. Keep in mind that drawers are handy, as are shelves divided horizontally and vertically. Filing cabinets are also great so that you can store the components of a scrapbook page together before you use adhesive to stick them to the scrapbook page.

My favorite way to store scrapbooking supplies is the portable storage system. Crop in Style sells a wheeled scrapbook organizer that will fit anything you could imagine needing for scrapbooking – paper, page protectors, scissors, adhesives, and even full sized scrapbooks. It’s so well designed that it takes up far less space than a traditional modular home-storage system, so you don’t have to feel guilty that your scrapbooking hobby is taking over your house. When you want to work on your scrapbook, you can wheel it over to the kitchen table or even the couch, work as long as you’d like, and then, when you’re done, pack everything away in the portable scrapbook storage and wheel it back into a closet or corner.

Whatever you get for your scrapbook supply organization, make sure it has ample room for all your supplies and in progress scrapbook materials.

The Original Post is Located Here: Scrapbooking Organization

Scrapbooking is all about using scraps of memories (photographs included, of course) and paper in imaginative ways. And even if you are a whiz with scissors, there’s no way that you can cut fine detail in very small objects, especially if you want to make many of one particular design. One way that scrapbookers have overcome this challenge is to utilize punching devices. This article will overview what punches are used for and where you can find these vital scrapbooking tools.

A paper punch for scrapbooking works on the same principle as a three-hole punch does. Accordingly, they’re very easy for scrapbookers to use and repeatedly. You take the punch, feed the desired paper into it, press down on the spring lever or button. Tap on the side of the punch a bit, and out will come what many scrapbookers affectionately call a “punchie.”

Once you start looking, you’ll find that there are more paper punch designs than you could possibly own. When first starting your collection, I would recommend getting the essentials – basic shapes such as squares, triangles, circles, stars, etc. and corner rounders. Punches for the letters of the alphabet can also be quite handy. Then, as the inspiration strikes you, you can gather punches for various holidays and events. A fun alternative to this idea is to buy a large lot of paper punches and have some mystery and excitement about what you’re going to be getting. This approach can definitely add to your creativity.

There are many companies that make paper punches. Martha Stewart especially stands out as a quality paper punch maker. There are a multitude of neat paper punch designed currently offered by the Martha Stewart brand. Stampin’ Up, a scrapbooking and rubber stamping company, and EK Success all sell a lot of paper punches that many scrapbookers enjoy.

The Original Post is Located Here: Paper Stampers

Paper punches used for scrapbooking are pretty easy to use, but there are a few things you need to know to master the art and keep your paper punches working for years to come. Let’s take a look at a few tricks of the paper punching trade and get you up to speed for paper punching excellence.

As you already know, a paper puncher definitely comes in handy when working with small shapes. Once you make your small punchie, a pair of tweezers really comes in handy for positioning the punchie and applying the correct amount of adhesive.

Applying adhesive to a punchie takes a deft hand and some knowledge added in for good measure. A wet scrapbook adhesive works best, especially the squeeze and roll dispensing type. Remember that it’s best to use the smallest amount of adhesive that does the job. For small punchies, start with a pinhead-sized drop applied to the back of the punchie. If you are layering your punchies on a page, start with the largest piece and glue the smaller punchies in succession. Press firmly, but don’t bend the punchies.

To keep your paper puncher working its best, you’ll need to do some simple maintenance. Over time, you paper punchers will naturally dull. You will notice this when your punch begins to make rougher cuts or not cut through the paper easily. To remedy this, take a piece of aluminum foil and have the punch cut through it two to three times, each in different places. If your punch starts sticking, you’ll need to lubricate it. For this, take a piece of wax paper and punch through the wax paper once. With a little bit of care, your paper punch should last for years to come and serve you well on many scrapbooking projects.

The Original Post is Located Here: How to Use and Maintain Paper Punches

If you’re new to the world of scrapbooking, all the different types of adhesives can be a daunting list. In this article, we’ll break down the proper adhesives into three main types and give you some examples of adhesives in each type and when it would be appropriate to use them.

The removable adhesive type is for items in your scrapbook which you may want to remove without damaging it or the paper around it. Adhesive dots are a handy example of removable adhesive. You can use adhesive dots deftly to attach photo mats or embellishments made from paper. Some brands which sell removable adhesives that are appropriate for scrapbooking are EK Success and 3M. If you have a hard time getting the residue off the scrapbook page after you’ve taken off the removable adhesive, try a reverse-adhesive product such as Un-du.

Along with the removable adhesive, the repositionable adhesive is an excellent tool for beginners, especially those who are unsure of themselves and want to give themselves options and a chance to correct things. Repositionable adhesives operate just like sticky notes do. Photo tape is one example of repositionable adhesive. You can use photo tape to stick any flat item onto your scrapbook page and move the item around as you see fit.

If you’re the type to live on the wild side of things, make sure that you have a few permanent adhesives. Though you’ll never want to use them on photographs, permanent adhesives can be a great way to affix paper layering and designs quickly and efficiently. A glue stick is a fine example of a permanent adhesive. An added bonus of this adhesive is that they are relatively easy to use and inexpensive.

As you might imagine, no scrapbook arsenal is complete without each type of adhesive, so keep that in mind when you’re starting the hobby or finding that you just don’t have enough supplies.

The Original Post is Located Here: How Do You Want Your Adhesive to Behave

After you’ve gotten all the scissors you’ll need, you may be tempted to assume that your scrapbooking supplies are complete when it comes to all the cutting tools that you need. In reality, however, there are a few crucial items that you’ll need to obtain, both for safety and convenience purposes. Let’s take a look at the other cutting tools that you need for scrapbooking excellence.

You will definitely need a few cutting mats. Check with all your cutting tool instructions to see what the manufacturers recommend. If no recommendation is given, I recommend having a few self-healing cutting mats. These mats are non-stick and won’t dull any of your blades, making them last longer and require less sharpening. Look for cutting mats which have grid lines on them. These will make cutting in a straight line easier.

A craft knife is a very handy tool when it comes to scrapbooking. You’ll be surprised by how versatile this tool is. You can do fine detail work with a craft knife with ease. Just make sure you use a cutting mat along with your craft knife. It’ll be absolutely essential. You can also use the tip of the craft knife blade to pick up tiny objects like punchies or scraps of paper.

Above all, though, I recommend a paper trimmer. If you want to have professional looking cuts, a paper trimmer is vital. You can crop photographs and sheets of paper or make borders if your paper trimmer comes with decorative edge attachments. Look for a paper trimmer that has a finger guard to protect your fingers. Scrapbooking should be fun and should never require a trip to the doctor. Having the right tools for the job will ensure that your hobby remains fun and safe..

The Original Post is Located Here: Cutting Through to Your Scrapbooking Needs