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Do you love the thought of scrapbooking for kids but don’t know how to get started?

Many scrapbooker’s would love to scrapbook with their kids but are not sure what supplies to offer or how to keep things from getting disorganized or too messy.

Do you just open your scrapbooking stash to your kids and let them choose what they want to use or should there be rules to scrapbooking for kids?

Here are some top tips for scrapbooking with children.

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We’ve all done it, ruined a perfect scrapbooking page layout.

Globs of glue in the wrong place, crooked stickers or typos are just a few common mistakes made on scrapbook pages.

Before you waste your paper and supplies by throwing out a page gone wrong, you may be able to salvage that layout with these scrapbooking ideas.

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You already know all the reasons why scrapbooking is your favorite hobby and the benefits it brings to your family. So why not share that hobby with your children as well?  Scrapbooking for children can be just as fun and meaningful as it is for adults.  There are many reasons to start scrapbooking with your kids.  Here are just a few reasons you should start enjoying scrapbooking with your kids today.

1.    The primary reason most people scrapbook is to preserve their family memories and photographs.  Scrapbooking for children is a perfect time to reminisce about favorite family memories.  While you create page layouts, you can relive your vacation to Disney World or the last time grandparents came to visit. 

2.    Scrapbooking family photographs opens up discussion about family history.  It’s a time to talk about your ancestors and how they lived.  So much subtle education can come from those discussions.  It’s a great opportunity to talk about family and friends that live far away as well.

3.    Scrapbooking for kids can be a creative outlet the same as it is for you.  Providing your children with the materials and letting them enjoy the creative process helps foster their imagination and artistic expression.  Scrapbooking for children should not be about the final product or page layout.  It should always be about experiencing the process, interacting with the materials and fostering their creativity.

4.    Scrapbooking for children is a chance for quality family time.  Whether you are scrapbooking with a child one on one or with a few children, you have the opportunity to really listen to them.   Have them talk about the pages they are designing, and ask them what they remember about the photographs in the page layout.  You may even be surprised at some of their answers. 

5.    Scrapbooking page layouts can also be educational.   Through scrapbooking, you can teach older children about color theory, design principles and even basic photography techniques.

6.    As your children are creating scrapbooking pages, they are expressing and documenting their thoughts and feelings in their own words.  They also are preserving their handwriting as they journal on their pages.  Scrapbooking pages created by your children reflect their unique perspective and memories of family events.

7.    Spending time with your children and scrapbooking is a chance to express family values.  Just looking through your photographs tells a lot about what your family values are.  Take the time to discuss them with your children.  Family time, friendships, and holiday celebrations all say something about what we value most in our lives.

8.    While you share scrapbooking time with your kids, you may just be training the next photographer or historian in your family.  One of your children may catch the scrapbooking bug just like you have.

Scrapbooking for kids provides endless opportunities to spend time with your children and have fun together as a family.  It can be educational as well as a creative outlet for both of you.  Round up your children and gather some photographs and scrapbooking supplies.  Enjoy scrapbooking with your kids today.

Christine Perry is an avid scrapbooker and has over 10 years of scrapbooking experience. Her favorite scrapbooking subjects are her reluctant teenagers. She invites you to her website, http://www.intoscrapbooking.com for more scrapbooking ideas and information on 2 Peas in a Bucket scrapbooking.

Is your child graduating high school this year?

The time seems to go by so fast. It often seems like only yesterday that our graduates
started kindergarten. Now they are graduating high school and will be off to college by fall. It’s important to preserve and document those special final moments of high school in a graduation scrapbook.

You may already have a school scrapbooking album for your child, but high school graduation memories can fill an entire scrapbook. Dedicate one album for this special occasion. It doesn’t need to be a large album,
but one that can accommodate professional portraits might be important if you plan to include the sittings for senior pictures.

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Are you ever stuck for a perfect phrase for your scrapbooking title?

Maybe you just stick with the date or the seasons like summer or fall. Some scrapbooker’s title every page with the name of the subject in the photograph.

It might be a place, like Disney World or the beach, or it could be a person’s name like Susan or Grandpa. Being creative with scrapbooking titles adds interest to a page layout just like embellishments and borders.

Music, movies and television can offer inspiration and ideas for your scrapbooking titles that will capture the mood and theme of your next page layout.

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If you’ve been scrapbooking for a while, you know how easy it is to get burnout and lack of motivation to create pages. It seems we still tend to pile up a stack of photos just waiting to be placed in an album, but we haven’t found just the right paper or embellishments yet, or maybe we can’t decide what scrapbooking techniques to use on them. Here are a few ideas to help overcome scrapbooking burnout…

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Scrapbooking adhesives come in more choices than ever. As this hobby grows, the manufacturers are responding to the needs of scrapbooker’s. Since page layouts have moved from just photos, paper and a few stickers to more complex designs like 3-D elements, metals, fabric and ribbon, scrapbooker’s now need adhesives that can handle the latest in scrapbooking trends and techniques.

The key to scrapbook adhesives is that they must be photo-safe. You need to be sure any product you are using on your scrapbooking pages, particularly on the back of your photos, will not cause damage to them over time. When it comes to adhesives, scrapbookers have a variety of options.

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The unique qualities of clear acrylic stamps make them a perfect choice for scrapbooking. Stamping on scrapbook pages has always been a challenge. Placing the stamp and avoiding excess ink are a few of the concerns that keep most scrapbookers from trying stamping techniques on their page layouts, but now with the availability of clear acrylic
stamps, anyone can get fantastic results from stamps on their scrapbooking pages.

Clear acrylic stamps, also called polymer stamps, are different from traditional wood block or foam-backed rubber stamps. They are more economical because they are not pre-mounted. Clear stamps are naturally tacky and stick to an acrylic block. They are easily removed allowing you to reuse the block again and again. You simply purchase unmounted clear stamps from any manufacturer, and these work with any clear acrylic mount. Buy a larger mount first that can be used with both small and large stamps. These stamps are also much easier to store, and because they are acrylic, they are lightweight and easy to transport to scrapbooking crops or classes.

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In the scrapbooking industry, artist trading cards (or ATC’s) are becoming more popular as trendsetting companies like 7 Gypsies release more ATC supplies and holders. These miniature pieces of art, or in the case of scrapbookers, mini page layouts, are as much fun to trade and collect as they are to create. There are few rules and limits on artist trading cards, and they are quick to make and adapt to scrapbooking materials.

The only strict requirement for artist trading cards is their size. The standard is 2.5″ x 3.5″. This is based on the size of sport trading cards and collectible card games like Pokemon and Magic. The orientation for your design can be either vertical or horizontal. You can use any medium you like, paint, paper, pencil, watercolor, pen and ink. Digital media and collage are very common. Any materials used on a scrapbooking page can be used on an artist trading card. Modern interest in these cards began around 1997 in Zurich, Switzerland. M. Vanci Stirnemann, a Swiss artist, is credited with popularizing ATC’s by starting trading sessions. However, we can trace miniature art back to Impressionist era artists who used business cards showing a sample of their work.

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