What You Should Know about Scrapbooking
Now that the New Year is just around the bend, you should already have made your New Year’s resolutions. Don’t forget to include scrapbooking in that list.
Scrapbooking is good therapy for your emotions and intellect
The first scrapbooking albums were actually just collections of letters, sketches and drawings, quotations and prayers that people put together as memoirs. What better way to express thoughts than in the words of people who wrote them in private to people them loved or made graphical representations of them on paper. Thus it was that the first scrapbookers devoted time to making elaborate diaries in their scrapbooks. There are quite a few famous personages who are included in the ranks of scrapbook hobbyists, not the least of them is author Mark Twain. He invented the first pre-made scrapbooks on which people pasted images that he himself made and treated with glue. He was said to have made over $50,000 on this invention, the only one that ever made money for him. There were not many photographs in those days. Therefore, lacking in pictures, they had to portray everything in words. The old scrapbooks were really documented memoirs or diaries. If Anne Frank had written her famous diary in more conducive surroundings, she would have probably pasted newspaper clippings in them. Among many famous historical figures who were also scrapbooking are Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. In fact Mar Twain made a fortune on his only creation that ever earned anything for him. This was a scrap book on which people pasted his pre-fabricated stickers most of which were about the things he was interested in. He had more than 50 versions of this scrapbook circulating by the time they had made a small fortune for him. The best scrapbooking enthusiasts had deep spiritual reasons for doing so. There must indeed be definite benefits to be derived from this activity.
Do not buy scrapbooks made of acidic paper or use acidic glues
Before beginning your first scrapbooking project, be aware of a few important things.
Your efforts will be useless in a matter of a few years if you select scrapbooks with acidic paper. They will simply corrode and dissolve in a matter of years, destroying the photographs and memorabilia that you have included in the process. Even if most scrapbooking being sold are made of alkaline paper, you should bother yourself and the vendor to verify this about your album. The clippings and notes that you add to the scrapbooking should also be alkaline. The same for the glue. Alkaline paper can last for up to hundreds of years and the photographs and memorabilia that you paste on them will not fade and discolor appreciably. Alkaline glue can be found in most bookstores. Therefore you should see to it that the paper you include in your scrapbooks will be relatively free from corrosive and acidic content. Although most of the commercially available paper is acid-free it will still be a good idea to verify this from the store where you purchase your scrapbook. You can expect your scrapbook to last for hundreds of year if you use the best alkaline paper and cardboard. Besides having a long lifespan, acid free paper will not ruin, discolor or blur the photographs that you paste into your scrapbook.
Fresh flower petals and decorative foliage should be dried thoroughly before including them in the scrapbook. The moisture content of fresh vegetation will discolor, if not rot, the page. The water content can also be damaging to the paper. Even the glue that you use for your scrap book has to be alkaline. You can purchase acid-free glue in bottles or sticks in most book stores and even on the internet.
Label everything in your scrapbooking album
Because you want your scrapbooking album to be meaningful to other people as well as for yourself, you need to label all the memorabilia that you use in it. More than just tagging them with labels, you should take the time to ‘blog’ in your scrapbook about the items that you have included. In this way, your scrapbook will gain something from your own personality; will be the embodiment of your sensibility.
Enhance the meaning of the page with appropriate embellishments
Just like anything else we present to the public to see, your scrapbook should be charming to look at and a pleasure to browse through. You will find many scrapbooking stickers that you can use for achieving that.
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