5 Scrapbooking Ideas for Beginners

Scrapbooking is popular among individuals who love to share their stories and precious moments with family and friends or preserve unforgettable memories in a creative and personalized way. One of the biggest misconceptions about scrapbooking is that you need to be naturally creative to do it. The truth is, everybody - even someone without an artistic bone in their body - is welcome to do it. With simple rules and guidelines, even beginners with no prior knowledge can create lovely scrapbook pages and layouts. All you need are memories, inspiration, scrapbooking paper, and other paper craft supplies! DIY scrapbooking allows you to get in touch with your innate creativity effortlessly! A scrapbook is also an excellent present for any occasion - a friend’s birthday, a sibling’s graduation, your parents’ anniversary, a wedding gift, etc. It makes for a heartwarming and thoughtful present.

There are so many scrapbooking ideas available online. However, before you get started, you need to know the necessary steps in making a scrapbook. 

• Think about your theme. What kind of scrapbooking are you interested in? Are you making one for yourself, your family, a friend, a coworker, or a spouse? You must determine your scrapbook’s theme from the start. This will help you get an overview of how your page is going to look.
  
  
• Make a list! Making a list of ideas, stories, events, occasions, celebrations, and other milestones in your life is crucial. After all, telling stories is one of the main purposes of creating a scrapbook.
  
  
• Print those photos. Sure, they look good on your Instagram feed, but you need printed photographs for your scrapbook album. Make sure to choose not just the best photos but the photos that will fit your theme. You might also want to crop and mat your photos in advance.
  
  
• Create a layout for your elements. It’s essential to figure out the placement of your elements. This is the part where your creativity is needed. Don’t fret! You don’t need to be SUPER creative or artistic to do this. You just need to determine a layout, find where each element will go, and start visualizing the overall look. You can find various scrapbook layouts on this page.

• Prepare your embellishments! This is the fun part! Embellishments are used to decorate your scrapbook page. From patterned scrapbooking paper to chipboard stickers - there is a wide variety of embellishments available in online crafting stores. Make sure your embellishments also fit your chosen theme. 
  
  
• Start creating! Once you’ve got all the scrapbook tools and supplies, you’ve determined a theme and a layout; you can start putting your scrapbook page together! You can use liquid glue, foam tape, or double-sided tape to adhere your elements onto your page.
       
  
• Add some journaling. Your scrapbook page isn’t complete without a little journaling! While some prefer just to add a scrapbook title, using alphabet stickers or alphabet stamps, most scrapbookers add a typewritten, printed, or hand-written note. This note can be a short description of the photo, a quote, a poem, a story, or anything you want to say about the scrapbook page.

Here are 5 quick and easy scrapbooking ideas for beginners like you!

1. Travel Scrapbook

When it comes to DIY scrapbooking, one of the most popular themes is travel. Who doesn’t love to travel? It’s fun, exciting, inspiring, and easy to document! When it comes to creating your travel scrapbook, try to focus on the story behind your chosen photo. It could be fantastic scenery, important monuments, exotic food, cute or wacky selfies, or a simple but beautiful captured moment. 

Here are 5 beginner-friendly travel scrapbooking ideas that you can try today!

• Simple traveler’s notebook using mixed media
• Fun and easy travel voucher
• Quick scrapbook layout using a scrapbook kit 
• Travel scrapbook filled with florals
• Colorful mixed media travel scrapbook

2. Everyday Moments

In this day and age where everyone takes photos of almost everything, it’s easy to find everyday and mundane moments that you can scrapbook about. From the first harvest in your little garden to a cute snapshot with your favorite pet - you can easily document simple but precious moments in your life. Although these might come out as dull or uninteresting, it’s up to you to add some much-needed pizazz and make your scrapbook page shine. Here are some tips on how to do that!

• Fill it with florals! You can never go wrong with florals. Adding a few die-cut florals to your layout will surely elevate even the most simple-looking photo. Check out how design team member Nathalie did it here.   
• Spruce up the background! It’s important to make your background pop to make sure that your page doesn’t get overlooked. You can use washi tapes to create a colorful background, stamp images all over it, or use stencils to add some interest.  
• Utilize patterned scrapbooking paper! If you’re in a hurry and you want to create a beautiful scrapbook page in under 10 minutes, patterned paper is the answer. You can adhere the patterned paper and use it as a background, or simply cut a few designs from it to elevate your page.   

Holidays and Seasons

Scrapbooking about different holidays, events, celebrations, and seasons is something you can do with family and friends. Nowadays, you can find paper crafting supplies that cater to different holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or simple celebrations like birthdays and weddings. Documenting the first snow or a fun summer adventure are also great ways to start your DIY scrapbooking journey.

Family Scrapbook

You don’t need to look any further to find the best scrapbook idea. A family-themed scrapbook is another popular theme among scrapbookers. You can choose to scrapbook about your whole family or individual family members (spouse, parents, kids, babies, grandparents, cousins, etc.). 

In this blog post, Altenew design team member Maryam documented her first-ever photo with her family. Here’s the step-by-step instruction on how to create this simple family scrapbook page:

• Stamp a bunch of flowers from the Beauty Within Stamp Set onto white cardstock, using black pigment ink.
• Start coloring them using the coloring stencil set, a few mixed media inks, and an ink blending tool.
• Die-cut the images if you have the coordinating die set, or fussy cut them with scissors.
• You can opt to leave the background white, or you can grab any stencil you like (Maryam used the Square Weave Pattern Stencil) ink it up with a mixed media ink, and create a background to imitate patterned paper.
• Start adhering all the floral cluster elements in place, add the photo, title, and journaling to complete the page.
• The title was created using the Simple Alpha Die Set, embossing ink, vellum paper, and Antique Gold Embossing Powder.

Scrapbook Planner

Did you know that you can turn your daily planner or journal into a scrapbook? That is the beauty of paper crafting - you can mix and match various types of crafts and create something unique. For instance, our design team member Kymona shared a few ways to decorate your planner using patterned paper, stamps, watercolor, stencils, and other embellishments. 

• Simple planner decoration using stamps.
• Stenciling on your planner page.
• Motivational scrapbook layout on a planner
• Decorating your scrapbook planner with scrapbooking paper.
• Using chipboard stickers and wood veneers on your scrapbook planner.
  

Finally, here are a few more helpful tips before you embark on your scrapbooking journey!

• Organize your thoughts and prepare your materials before you start. Your scrapbook could be a theme or story page, so organize your photos and embellishments accordingly.
• Less is more.
• Avoid touching photos to prevent deterioration.
• There are pens designed for writing on the back of the photos.
• Don’t use original photos. Scan and print them, so if you make mistakes, you can just scan another copy.
• Make use of journaling. It adds an extra element and personal touch.
• Always keep your leftover papers, embellishments, and other supplies.