This article is geared towards providing a basic guide for beginners who want to do some Christmas scrapbooking of their own. However, advanced scrapbookers may also find a few useful tips here. It never hurts to browse and maybe learn a few more tricks of the trade, even if you do have several years of scrapbooking under your belt.

The first thing you should do is to gather all those photographs that you took during the holidays. You should also decide on a specific theme, even if you’re making a Christmas scrapbook. For example, will your scrapbook be about family celebrations or more about partying with friends? Your choices will help you narrow down the photos that you’re going to use for your album. Whether it’s for friends or family, however, you should be mindful to pick out the photos that will give your viewers a clear, strong sense about who you and your companions are.

The scrapbooking materials you’re going to use should also follow the theme you are after. The background papers and embellishments should provide enhancement to your photos, not clash with them. As for your color selection, they should definitely include green, white, and red, which are the customary colors for the holiday season. The easiest thing to do here is to go out to your local hobby or crafts shop and pick out a pre-packaged Christmas scrapbooking kit. These kits have almost everything you need — stickers, paper, borders, frames, tags, and other embellishments.

Now you can use these materials and coordinate them with your own memorabilia to create a beautiful Christmas scrapbook. With regards to memorabilia, I’m not just talking about photographs. You can also use other items such as handprints of your kids, leftover Christmas wrapping paper, handmade ornaments, or maybe some beer bottle caps from that wild party you had with your friends. As with any other scrapbooking project, anything goes — as long as it tells a story and fits the theme.

Don’t limit yourself to the materials that came with your kit. Be creative and use the items around you. Place some frames or borders on the page and embellish them with markers, paints, inks, or rub-ons. Did you spend the Christmas eve with a very special companion? Why not use lipstick to commemorate that romantic moment? Have your wife or girlfriend put some lipstick on and plant some kisses on your page. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen in a few scrapbook albums, and it looked great!

I hope that this article will help you to come up with your very own ideas for your Christmas scrapbooking. Remember that the most important thing is to select and use the items that tell the story you want. Use all the materials available to you, whether it’s from a store or in your own home. Enjoy your scrapbooking project!

Pride – For me, it is the most repeated sin. It is looking at your work and how you feel once you have finished it. Do you always feel that inner sparkle whenever you have completed a theme that you are very happy with? Taking pride in your work is not a terrible thing, but when you overly compliment yourself and do not ever give favorable remarks on the work of others. Perhaps you should watch your step!

Envy – Do you ever envy the accomplishment of other people? Have you been jealous of your friends’ works of art; probably wish you have considered that amazing concept first? Do you have a passion to produce work just like your favorite artist? Do you prefer to “scrap-lift” other people’s designs and live by their ideas? You might be guilty of jealousy.

Gluttony – The same thing as greed, gluttony is about over-extravagance and over-consumption and actually both sins go together. Exactly how uncontrollable are you about getting the newest and very best items that are available on the market? Buying excessively whenever you shop is basically gluttony.

Lust – Lust is a sin that is connected to both greed and gluttony. However, lust stresses on intense thoughts. Do you lust after fabulous things? Do you do window shopping in all the scrapbooking stores but never purchase anything at all? Do you help other people by giving them the specifics of your latest finds? Do you simply adore touching the brand new paper or relishing the smell of a new product fresh from the box? You might be committing a sin, after all.

Sloth – I am in fact very organized inside my hobby room although I have moments of laziness soon after it develops into despair that drives me into thoroughly cleaning my hobby area over again. I’m really lousy at arranging items back when I have used them over a theme. Do you concern yourself with the chaos you leave behind your own hobby room door? Do you put this down to just being artistic? Or maybe you simply do not care? Sloth is in essence laziness but can be overpowered by making sure that you pick up right after yourself at all times.

Anger – This one is a horrible sin. It centers on anger and fury, a thing that is seldom seen within the compassionate scrapbooking industry. I know, however, many people are guilty of this particular sin in not so big ways. Did you put an item down on a design only for it to end up being awful then got angry with yourself as you attempted to fix it followed by ruining the entire layout? You might have shouted at your children merely because they found that inkpad in the hobby room and attempted to replicate your creativeness. This can be perceived as anger.

Greed – Have you, throughout the years, gathered a huge amount of scrapbooking items that you actually consider as your treasure? Just how many of these items in your treasure that you did not touch for the reason that you have not found the correct theme to apply them on at this point? Do you collect things too much and also buy stuff whenever they are on discount sales despite the fact that have no need for them. In case you have answered yes to each of these questions then you could possibly be guilty of greed. You might want to control your spending and then begin to make use of some of your collection

So there you have it, the deadly sins of scrapbooking. The next occasion that you are in your hobby room to make some wonders on a new page, check out these sins and determine if you can identify yourself in any of them.

When you want to learn how to scrapbook about an event or occasion, it can be helpful to take a step back and consider the type of events you usually love to scrap about. Do you have a preference for family events like weddings, birthdays, or anniversaries? Or maybe you’re the do-it-all type who just loves to create scrapbooks for any kind of occasion, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, graduations, vacations, and sports activities? As an avid scrapbooker, you will find many events and occasions to create a scrapbook about as the months and years go by. Oftentimes though, you will find that the most meaningful events are the most difficult ones to scrap about.

The first thing you should really do is to plan about the event and how you can scrap about it, weeks or even months before it actually happens. If you have ever started working on a project without pre-planning of some kind, you will know just how difficult and overwhelming it can be. When a meaningful event is coming up, you’d better start making plans for what you want to do in terms of scrapbooking about it.

Make a list of what equipment or supplies you need to document the event. Most often, a camera is top priority, but just having a camera is not enough. You still need to think about the kind of photographs you will take, your location for the shots, and maybe taking along an assistant for those times when you need to hand over the camera to someone else. If it’s a family event, you will have to join in on the activities from time to time, which will limit your capability to take pictures. Having someone to take over for you in those instances will be a big help.

A notebook is also a top-notch choice to bring along. Most often, there will be lots of people saying stuff that deserve to be in your scrapbook journaling. It can be a few lines from a speech or a toast, or maybe some jokes that deserve to be told over and over again. Of course, you will definitely need a notebook to jot down names, dates, addresses, and other important details about the event that you may need later on.

Of course, don’t forget about the memorabilia. Ticket stubs to places or events, bus or airplane tickets, flyers, menus, torn pages from a newspaper or magazine, bottle caps, hats, food wrappers — everything can be relevant to the event and your scrapbooking, depending on how you see it. These items can add a lot of personality and meaning to your scrapbook pages, and they are able to evoke memories of those important events and occasions years after they occurred.

Okay, now that the event is over and you have lots of photographs taken, it’s time to sort them out. You can either print them all out and lay them in front of you on the table, but I will assume that you have a digital camera, so your photographs will also be in digital format that can be viewed on a computer monitor. If this is the case, then it would be extremely practical to sort them out first on your computer, and then printing out the pictures that you really like. You will save a lot of money this way.

Look at the photographs you’ve taken of the event. Try to clear your mind and see which pictures jumps out at you. Which pictures contribute more to the story of the event? Which photos are able to convey the strongest message or evoke memories? These are the photographs you want to keep. If you have a lot of photographs from a single event, you can also separate them into categories, like pictures of friends or family members, pictures taken during games, etc. You may find a few photos that really stand out from the group, so these photos can very well be your main subjects for your album later on.

Another huge problem for beginners is the journaling aspect of scrapbooking. Even if the event you are scrapping about is meaningful to you, journaling about it can be difficult. There is a lot of pressure on ourselves to produce meaningful, heartfelt lines that go hand in hand beautifully with the gorgeous photos and layouts that you have created. In this case, I often find that thinking about the event in different terms can help ease the pressure.

Instead of purely focusing on the emotions (which can bring on feelings of urgency and tension), try to think about the fun, the enjoyment, and what has been accomplished on that day. Think about the people who were there and what they did. Take a look at your photographs from the event and try to analyze the messages that those photos are trying to convey. What are the stories that you most remember about the event or occasion? Gather those thoughts, jot them down if necessary, and then journal away. You will produce only a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs, depending on your writing style. Don’t worry about it and just go with the flow.

Those are the most basic yet highly important elements of scrapbooking about meaningful events and occasions that I can share with you. Of course, as you go along and continue to scrap about more events later on, you will learn more techniques that will help you create better-looking and more meaningful scrapbooks.

The most frequently used scrapbooking stickers are the letter or alphabet stickers. These are the kinds of stickers that can be used for names, journaling, page titles, and many others. They add great appeal to the page layouts. If you want to use letter stickers for your scrapbook page title, you will need a ruler and a piece of wax paper. Line up the alphabet stickers on the wax paper using the ruler. Then attach the stickers to your scrapbook title bar as you also peel the wax paper off. This would produce letters in a straight line across the scrapbook page.

On the other hand, a ruler can solely help you make the alphabet stickers straight and even. Stick the letters on the edge the ruler and then put the ruler in the exact place on your page where you want them to be. Next, press the letter down so that the tops of the alphabets would stick to the page. Slowly flip the ruler to release all the letters. Finish the task by sticking them to your scrapbook page. Stickers are generally fragile so do this carefully to avoid bending them when you flip the ruler over. In addition, the ruler helps in measuring the spacing of your letters to make them evenly spaced on the page.

Another letter sticker technique is using blocks of paper. Stick a single letter sticker in the center of every block to create a title or name. You may also layer these stickers on the top of cardstock letters. This creates a dimension or shadow effect on your layouts.

Stickers may be frail but they can be unforgiving the moment they are placed on the scrapbook page. Even the most seasoned scrapbookers make mistakes with stickers. If you happen to attach a sticker mistakenly, don’t worry. Actually, there are several correction solutions that you can do.

The following are some tips on how to fix your sticker mistakes:

- Slowly peel off the sticker. Usually, this leaves some residues. Using an adhesive eraser will remove any leftover parts. This technique often damages the sticker, but does not ruin the layout.

- Use an adhesive remover when peeling the sticker from the scrapbook page. Do your best not to damage both the sticker and the paper.

- Cover your sticker with a matching paper. Use your creativity to make it look intentional.

- Cover the sticker with another bigger sticker. You may also cover it with another embellishment.

To sum up, stickers are excellent materials to make your page layouts look fabulous. You can definitely make a few mistakes along the way. Just use this sticker blunders to create new ideas and get you artistry flowing.

When I compare the availability of supplies in those “ancient” days to what we now have on the shelves and drawers of our favorite crafts and hobbies shops, it brings to me another level of understanding as to why a lot of beginners get frustrated and intimidated. The number of options that are now available to scrapbookers can simply be overwhelming at times, and it seems to me now that you need to take a course in “Scrapbooking Albums 101″ just to understand the whole thing.

However, the whole process of picking out and buying a scrapbooking album can be made pretty simple. All you really need to know is what the available options are. Then you can choose the right album depending on what you need it for. So if you are planning to go out and buy a new scrapbooking album, these are the factors you need to consider:

Availability – Is this readily available in all the shops I usually buy my stuff from? More importantly, will finding replacements and accessories that fit this album be an easy task? You may need to buy page protectors and other replacements that match that exact album style, so knowing this beforehand can save you a lot of grief later on.

Form vs. Function – Yes, this album may look impossibly beautiful, but does it really fit what I need for my project? Is this a trending style, and will I still think of it as beautiful several years down the road? A fancy style may look horrible to your eyes five years from now. Additionally, you also need to consider how that album will look like when you place it in your bookcase, for example, how easy it is to add or remove pages, and whether or not you can fit bulkier pages in it.

Price – Ask yourself if this album is affordable and a good deal overall. You may be able to afford it now, but what if you need to buy more albums like that later on? The costs of replacement items, like page protectors, posts, etc. will also have to be taken into account, not only at the exact momuent you’re buying it, but also for future purchases.

Aside from these important factors, there are a few more variables you need to think about when shopping for a scrapbooking album. You also need to consider album sizes, the types of albums available, and how much your purchase will cost you.

From my experience, there are two standard sizes for scrapbooking albums: the 8.5″ x 11″ size and the 12″ x 12″ size. These can cost anywhere from $15 to over a hundred dollars each. You may also want to consider the number of layouts that a standard-sized album can hold. In this case, both albums are able to hold 60 to 70 layouts on average, but if you’re fond of using bulky embellishments on your pages, you may need to cut that number down by half. Like I mentioned above, you should also factor in the costs of accessories. For example, an album that holds around 60 layouts means that you will also need to buy 30 page protectors.

Generally, it is very easy to find accessories and replacements for albums that are sized 8.5″ x 11″. Cardstock, page protectors, and the albums themselves are affordable and won’t burn a hole in your pocket when you’re in the crafts shop. A single layout for a 8.5″ x 11″ album can hold around 2 to 3 photos (uncropped), while heirloom photos (which are usually smaller than modern photographs) can fit perfectly. The albums hold around 60 layouts total. Scrapbooking albums of this size can easily fit into bookcases, and are easily handled even by young people.

For 12″ x 12″ albums, it is not difficult to find supplies and accessories, unlike several years before. However, you can expect to spend a little more money on purchases. You can fit around 3 to 5 photographs on a single layout of this size, although the album still holds 60 layouts like its smaller-sized brother. It can be a bit unmanageable and heavy to carry, though, if that 12″ x 12″ album is already full to the brim with pages, photos, and embellishments. It is also quite difficult to photocopy an entire page if you need them for duplicates, and you may have a hard time fitting them properly into bookcases because of their size.

Now that you’re familiar with album sizes and their features, let’s talk about the different types of albums that are available for scrapbookers. You may have read or heard about strap, post-bound or ring-bound albums from your friends and didn’t know what they were talking about, so read on and be educated.

First of all, the common material used for covering these types of albums are either leatherette, leather, vinyl, or fabrics like sailcloth, linen, or tapestry. Some albums may have laminated cardboards for covers instead. As you can expect, the materials used will also influence the prices of these albums, so a leather-covered album might be more expensive than a linen-covered one.

Aside from the covers, here are a few more things you need to know about the types of albums available to you:

Post-bound albums have 2 or 3 metal posts that are used to hold the pages together (along with the page protectors) in between the front and back covers. There are screw heads on both ends of a post, one of which is movable.

A ring-bound album — sometimes also called a ring binder — usually has three rings that are attached to the spine of the album and clamp down to hold the pages and page protectors together. It’s very similar to a common three-ring binder, but with more attractive covers.

Strap albums have two or three nylon straps to hold the pages together between the covers. The straps are designed to run through the staples on the page edges. They are also known as hinge albums.

You may also find spiral-bound albums and stapled albums in the crafts shop. A spiral-bound album is very similar to a spiral-bound notebook in that it also has a coil or “spring” which fastens the pages in between the covers. The coil can be made of metal or nylon. A stapled-spine album, on the other hand, has staples attached to the spine in a centerfold style to fasten the pages to the album. Sometimes you can find albums of this type which the staples attached to the edges instead of the center.

So there you go. You have successfully passed your course in Scrapbook Albums 101. Now all you have to do is to apply what you’ve learned and develop your new-found knowledge some more. Who knows? With the combined power of information and practical application, you may yet earn the title of “Scrapbooking Guru”.