Preventing Scrapbook Burnout

It’s easy to make a scrapbook, but you may find yourself wishing for a little more than the same old cutting and pasting pictures sometimes. There are premade scrapbook decorations you can purchase, but these often suffer from being too much of the same thing; and they also don’t give you as much latitude for creative expression with your scrapbook pages. Because of this, scrapbook ennui can strike and when it does, scrapbooks often go on the shelf and are forgotten.

There are several techniques you can use to keep your scrapbooks interesting. These can make your scrapbook projects exciting and look better once they’re finished.

Re-use. With all the papers, laces, cloths, and other materials that you have used to decorate your scrapbook pages, you are bound to have a lot of left over materials. Do not throw these away. Make use of them by reusing them in other pages.

Make the best of the situation and use these old pieces to make something new. Sew leftover pieces of cloth together and paste them onto a scrapbook page. Small pieces of paper can be cut into smaller ones and arranged into decorative patterns on a page.

Rubber stamps: Admittedly, rubber stamps are a scrapbook staple, but you can use them in different and unexpected ways. Try using differently colored paints instead of ink with these stamps for an unusual effect.

Pop-ups: Using the occasional pop-up in your scrapbook can keep things exciting; just don’t use them so often that they become boring too! You can make pop-ups using photos, decorations or anything else you want to pop out of the page. Simple adhesive tape can be used to make these surprising accents.

Fold Pages In. Tired of opening and looking at a readily opened scrapbook page each time you turn a page? Try folding some pages in.

Fall pages: Fall pages let you create almost any effect you could want to use in your scrapbook pages. You can add die cuts, pop-ups, do some paintings and many other things. You can get some great and interesting looks without actually needing to be a design pro.

Photo frames: Rather than pasting in those photos, show them off to best effect by using a photo frame. Just about any material you happen to have on hand can be made into a decorate frame which draws the eye with ease.

Matchbook- style scrapbooks: If you feel like you simply can’t face up to making another boring old scrapbook page, then try something a little different; a matchbook scrapbook! A miniature scrapbook which is put together to look like a matchbook, these are fun to make and easy to carry around and show to friends. Working in a new format can recharge your creative batteries.