Scrapbooking has become increasingly popular in recent years amongst university students. When there are so many events and memories to scrapbook at uni, it’s easy to see why! Whether you’re a practiced scrapbooker or a complete newbie hoping to start your first scrapbook soon, this article is here to guide you, providing some ideas about where to get scrapbook supplies, what to scrapbook, and layout ideas.
The scrapbooking basics
The first thing you will need is a scrapbook. They come in all different shapes, sizes, and colours. Browsing the internet or heading to your nearest art supplies shop might be a good place to start. Try to get an idea of what sort of scrapbooking aesthetic you’re aiming for.
For example, a brown scrapbook will give a more rustic vibe, whereas one with black pages will probably require a white pen for any writing to show up. A scrapbook with white pages will be the simplest to write on, as any pen colour shows up against white, but it all depends on what you’re preferences are!
Try and get a vague idea of how many things you want to put on each page too, as the more stuff you’re planning on putting on for each page, the more page room you’ll need. So, have a browse, compare prices, colours, and sizes, and take note of any that you like to make sure you find the perfect scrapbook for you!
You will also need some form of glue, and some pens if you want to write on your pages.
What to scrapbook
The next step is choosing what it is that you want to scrapbook. Is it pictures of places you’ve travelled to during uni? Or pictures from every society social you attended throughout uni? Perhaps you want to capture every day of your life for an entire year. You could even use inspirational quotes you have heard or seen as a pick-me-up for when you’re feeling down. Basically, you can scrapbook whatever you want. There are no limits!
If you’re struggling to decide what to scrapbook, try making a bullet point list of some events or memories you would want to capture on paper, and then work out the best way to scrapbook those ideas once you’ve got a few on your list.
Collecting the accessories
The fun thing about scrapbooking is you can turn practically anything into a scrapbook accessory. From pictures, drawings, tickets and receipts, to decorative extras, such as buttons, ribbon, string, tissue paper, glitter, stickers, doodles: the list goes on and on!
You may be able to find some of these decorative accessories laying around your house. If not, art supply and stationary shops, as well as big supermarkets, will sell a lot of these things. You could also make use of nature, such as flowers and leaves, as stencils or press them into paint and then onto the page to create colourful, natural patterns.
Choosing your layouts
Choosing layouts can be difficult because the possibilities are truly endless. However, the beauty of scrapbooking is each page or each event can have a completely different layout. My advice is collecting your images and anything else you want to put on one page and working out what colour scheme would work best for that memory. This will allow you to work out what decorative accessories would work best, and then you can play around with the placement of everything you want to use on the page. Make sure to experiment with different placements of your things before gluing anything down, so if you do change your mind, it’s not a problem.
If you’re really struggling to think of any ideas, have a search on Pinterest. They have many different ideas for many different aesthetics, and there’ll undoubtedly be something on there to spark your creativity.
The takeaway message
When it comes to scrapbooking, the world is your oyster! There are no rules, no limits, and no rights or wrongs. As long as you’re happy with your end result, that’s all that matters. Happy scrapbooking!
