Stained glass mosaics are an elegant, regal touch to any scrapbook page. Stained glass is especially pretty in the most formal or heavily religiously themed scrapbooks.
Stained glass is available at most craft stores. As are pattern shears, required to cut the stained glass panes.
The sweetest accents to a child's scrapbook page are handprints. Handprints are especially appreciated in baby or grandparent scrapbooks.
To create great three-dimensional items of any shape and size use polymer molds. Polymer molds can be used to make virtually any shape.
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Fabric flowers make great embellishments on scrapbook pages. Unlike plastic flowers, fabric flowers look more realistic.
Further, unlike real flowers, fabric flowers have a long life span. Flowers are made with fabric and wire. Make a wire loop.
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Copper, tarnish or untarnished, adds a unique metallic look to your scrapbook page. Furthermore, copper is fairly easy to work with and cut into various shapes.
Beautiful silver and gold accents make a wonderful touch to lettering or tags on your scrapbook page. This is a very elegant touch on gift scrapbooks or invitations.
To make these accents, stamp a piece of vellum with embossing ink and heat and stick powder. Next, Heat the item.
Then, using a small paintbrush, paint this piece of vellum with gold leaf. Brush off the excess powder with a brush.
Embossed foil creates unique elegant accents and highlights on photographs. This adds a touch of age and antiqueness to scrapbook pages.
To make embossed foil, place a piece of carbon paper on top of the foil. Next, place a picture on top of the foil.
Then, trace around the picture using an embossing tool. You can also use a rubber stamp.
Ready made embossed foil is also available at your local craft store.
Wax paper ink dye has an effect resembling tie-dye. This creates a great children's art background or a funky scrapbook for a close friend.
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Glass marbles add a unique magnifying effect to letters or photographs under them. This is a great elegant touch for favorite relatives or gift scrapbooks.
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ABC beads look great on children's artwork and baby scrapbooks.
Now you can make faux beads too. Simply print out your word in a large straight font, with several spaces between each letter.
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Typewriter keys add a learned look to a scrapbook page. Typewriter keys create an added personal touch to scrapbooks for secretaries, writers, and students.
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Frosting adds a unique tough to all of your metal charms. This creates a softened look suitable for baby and grandparent scrapbooks.
To create this frosted charm look, sprinkle embossing powder and glitter on the metal charms and heat. Repeat this process again, before the item has a chance to cool. Attach the charms to your scrapbook once they cool completely.
Get the rusted metal look without the rusted metal. Coat a red or burgundy colored cardstock with brown chalk. Next, add tan chalk for a powdery finish.
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To give a chalked accent to your items without the mess of the chalk, print images directly onto vellum. Next, color the back of the vellum with a marker.
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Faux painting can be created primarily with various colored sheets of paper. This can be used to add color and a dramatic flare to a dull scrapbook page.
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If you enjoy sewing and embroidery, you can use these skills to create amazing embellishments. These designs create great focus pieces for elegant gift scrapbooks.
Patterns can be either sewn directly into the scrapbook page or onto a piece of fabric. This fabric can then either be used as a background or pasted on the page.
Quilling can be as simple as gluing a few precut strips onto a scrapbook page or as complex as artful designs. The design you create depends only upon your creativity and talent. Quilling creates an exotic handicraft look to scrapbooks.
Quills are available in specialty craft stores.
Beads can add color and design to a scrapbook. Beading can be as simple as gluing a few beads onto a scrapbook page or as complex as a sewn beaded design.
An interesting alternative to regular paper tags is using scrap metal. This adds a masculine touch that is great for those interested in cars, trains, airplanes, or metalworking.
Embossing is basically painting using heat. Embossing adds color and metallic shine to items. Embossing can be used to add a metallic feel to a truck or train in a children's book or add a masculine touch to a graduation scrapbook.
Dry brushing is a technique used to highlight or shade objects or areas of a scrapbook page. Drybrushing gives the appearance of weathered wood.
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Crystal lacquer adds shine and protection to your photographs. This shine adds a soft elegance to any scrapbook page. However, crystal lacquer looks especially nice on more formal gift scrapbooks.
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Tinting is a great way to add a touch of color to black-and-white photos. Tinting can be used to draw focus to a certain portion of a photograph or add color to a dull black and white page.
Smudging by accident is an easy task, smudging for effect is quite another. Using a marker, add color to a paper towel or make up sponge. Then, smudge the color onto the page. With a little practice, smudging can create a hazy or smoky effect. This effect can be used to create a relaxed, outdoorsy feel to your scrapbook page.
Magnetic sheets and magnetized photo albums can be used as backgrounds. Often these sheets have an adhesive strip on one side to promote adherence to even nonmetal objects.
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Moldable foam allows you to create anything your imagination and talent allow.
You can create three-dimensional object or you can create three-dimensional borders or backgrounds. This technique looks great on children's artwork and in educational scrapbooks.
Continue reading "62 Scrapbooking Supplies: Moldable Foam" »
Kool Aid makes a fabulous paper and fabric dye. This dye can be used to create a funky pattern on fabric.
Just mix a packet of Kool Aid with about twelve ounces of water and stir until the mix dissolves.
Next, place the paper or fabric you want dyed into the Kool Aid for a few minutes.
Then, rinse the material under cool water and set to dry before use.
Liquid appliqué can be use to draw and paint embellishments or create accents around focus objects. These embellishments and accents can be as simple or as fancy as you desire and your creativity allows.
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One good way to add dimension to images is to use double stick foam tape.
Double stick foam tape literally allows items to pop out at your reader adding realism to items. This technique is especially useful in children's art and educational scrapbooks.
Simply, cut the foam tape into whatever shape and size you want. Then, attach to shape onto your scrapbook page.
Double stick foam tape is available at most craft stores in various colors and thicknesses.
A great way to add depth to your scrapbook page is to add shadow boxes. Basically shadow boxes add a shadow to your images.
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Basically punching is the cutting out of an image or piece of text using a cookie cutter like tool. Most punches are made of die cast steel. They come in various shapes and sizes. Photographs and text blocks can be punched into virtually any shapes or sizes. These shapes can add to the impact of the themes.
Fraying can create extremely interesting and artist border accents.
Fraying looks especially good in children's scrapbooks, as well as pages for your more creative and imaginative friends.
As the word suggests, tearing is the ripping of paper or tissue paper into various shapes or abstract forms. Paper tearing creates an artist look to backgrounds, borders, and embellishments and is commonly used to come up with wonderful scrapbook layout ideas.
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For more dramatic results from your photographs, trying weaving two copies of the same photograph together. This technique creates a three-dimensional artist look.
This technique would look great on a scrapbook for a graduating art student or a scrapbook for a friend who is quite artist and creative. This technique might also look good on a child's scrapbook with a kid's art background giving the whole page an abstract look.
Looking for free scrapbooking art to include in your scrapbooks? Here's a unique way of finding free scrapbooking art, right at your own home.
Kids bring home the greatest creations of macaroni, glitter, and finger paint. Unfortunately, the macaroni bits and glitter is soon all over the floor or eaten by the dog.
Various scrapbooking graphics and clip art are available on the Internet. Many of these scrapbooking graphics can be downloaded or printed for free. Downloading and printing images is a good way to find pictures or photographs of your child's favorite television character or band for a unique personalized touch. Print these scrapbooking graphics or clipart directly onto lignin-free and acid-free paper.
Scrapbook layout ideas involving newspaper clippings are very popular these days. Newspaper clippings of birth announcements, team photographs, or favorite celebrities add a personal touch to your scrapbooking layout.
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The great thing about modern technology is that you can make copies of your baby announcements, recipes, and calendars without a great deal of hassle via digital scrapbooking. This reduces time and money.
Furthermore, the ability to copy scrapbook pages allows more scrapbooking uses whether digital or hardcopy.
You put a great deal of time, thought, and effort into your scrapbook pages so why not put a little more thought into the kind of scrapbook products you will need to make your scrapbook last? You should try to protect and preserve your work.
The most important way to protect your pages is by using lignin free and acid free scrapbook products.
No matter how careful you are, you will undoubtedly find a mistake, mark, or mess on your finished scrapbook page. If you find a mistake, mark, or glue bits on your scrapbook page, just rub it off using a soft white eraser.
Alternately, make the mark into an interesting squiggle or doodle that fits in with the scrapbook page.
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Your own unique scrapbooking embellishments add a special personal touch to your scrapbook pages. Scrapbooking embellishments can be used as the main focus of your page, to highlight items, or as borders.
Scrapbooking embellishments can range from simple items such as stickers and ribbon to more complex techniques such as adding faux beads and silver accenting. Use your imagination and creativity.
Scrapbook tags are a little added touch of professionalism that adds to the overall well thought out look to your scrapbook. Scrapbook tags can be used for accents, captions, and thought bubbles as well as dedications. The design of your scrapbook tags will depend entirely on your personal needs and desires.
Thus, scrapbook tags can be big or small, square or specially shaped, white or colored, plain or textured.
You may or may not want to add text to your scrapbook page. You may want to just write captions below the pictures. You may want to add your own stories or poems.
You may want to add journals describing the day to day life of your baby or your child's accomplishments.
Continue reading "7 Adding Text to Your Creative Scrapbook" »
Most scrapbooks will contain photographs. Even the most disinterested reader of your scrapbook will glance at the photographs.
Why pay attention to scrapbooking photographs? Pictures really are worth a thousand words. Therefore, it is important to choose photographs that are of good quality and clearly illustrate your scrapbook theme.
Colors and color coordination and contrast will highlight and accent your scrapbooking. A well thought out color scheme can help define the theme of a page, attract attention to specific items, or detract away from mistakes.
Colors and poorly chosen color schemes, on the other hand, can cause your scrapbook page to look gaudy or mismatched.
The theme of your scrapbook can be simple or complex. Your theme could be a special event such as a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding, Christmas, or Halloween.
Themes can also be personalized to the scrapbook recipient's special interests. Special interests themes include favorite colors, sports, favorite television programs, music, the outdoors, or cultural influences.