Susan's Favorite Tips & Tricks for Scrapbooking

I'm certainly no expert, but I thought I might share a few things I've learned since I started scrapping in 2004.  I hope you will share back with me and the other readers too!  Here we go......

1. Not sure if a stamp is the perfect design for a certain spot? Stamp it first with a solvent ink like "StazOn" on a piece of plastic and lay over your project in progress to check. Clear inserts or packaging that come with products are handy for this.

2.  Older stickers and diecuts that you probably won’t use again make great masks. To use the diecuts,  lightly apply a re-positionable adhesive to the back. Then ink, paint or spray over them.  Use baby powder on the sticker adhesive to make it non-sticky and re-positionable.

3.  Place embellishments in odd numbers like three and five for more visual impact.

4.  Push pins are a staple in my toolbox.  I use them to pierce a pin hole in paper to set a brad or if I need to do a little hand stitching.  I also use them to unclog glue bottles.  I store them by sticking them in an old piece of packaging that some brads came in.

5.  Keep a scrapbooking notebook.  I buy those 99 cent composition books and then cover and embellish them...

This is a composition book my niece covered and embellished using Prima's Rebellious Papers and Rub-Ons

Mine is with me most of the time.  I can jot down ideas and inspirations.  Or maybe I just need to remember a cool website or the name of a new paper company.  I also use mine to draw layout sketches.  Of course, my notebook ends up holding my Flamingo Scraps to do lists too!

6.  Always date your layouts - even if it's only on the back.  Years and years from now, your descendants will be glad you provided a timeline for family events.  At Amanda's urging, Flamingo Scraps now carries 7 Gypsies mini labels.  These are perfect for writing dates on.

7.  Don't reinvent the wheel!  Use easily available resources like Two Peas In A Bucket-Pea Soup.  It's an awesome compilation of titles, quotes, poems and sayings for a variety of subjects.  Just use the search function.  Or how about using this Bazzill card stock matching service?  Use the arrows to find your patterned paper's manufacturer, then the paper collection and voila! - the coordinating Bazzill cardstock colors are already matched for you!

8.  Do you have a drawer full of partially used embellishments?  Perhaps you bought something specifically to go with a themed layout and now you're stuck with the leftovers?  Take a look at the remaining items with an objective eye.  Maybe some Glimmer Mist or Stickles will change it enough that you can use it for something unrelated.  Glimmer Glam and Glimmer Glaze cover quite well as does dipping something in melted UTEE.  Step outside your box and experiment - what do you have to lose?  Just some old embellishments that were just taking up room.

9.  Inking makes everything better!  Inking your paper edges, especially those you are layering, gives the illusion of depth.  Patterned papers tend to get "lost" in each other without inked edges to show where one paper ends and another begins.  Did you crop that photo?  No one wants to see those stark white raw edges - ink your cropped photos!  It's important to know what kind of ink to use too.  Here is a Scrapjazz article that explains the differences in inks.

10. Challenge yourself to learn something new.  The internet is a wealth of information in the forms of blogs, videos and social networking.  Find several blogs that are good for tutorials and techniques and follow them.  Blogging has been a real revelation for me - would you believe that four months ago I had never written a blog?  I didn't even have the password to our blog!  Now, I'm a bloggin' fool!

I hope you have found something useful in today's post!  Won't you leave a comment with one of your favorite scrapbooking tips or tricks?