Origami for scrapbooking

I’m generally a bit conservative when it comes to scrapbook page layouts. I tend to cut my pictures and snippets out as rectangles, and arrange them very geometrically. I try to change it up, but to my recent,  regular generally looks best.

What this does mean is that the embellishments have to work quite hard to give a sense of fun and keep it decorative. I do use a variety of things for this task, including:
– ribbons, often in bows
– buttons
– mini pegs (oh, my word, do I love mini pegs)
– abandoned cupcake toppers, etc.

An especially helpful option that I return to often is origami, i.e. folding a shape out of available paper or card.
Reasons this works so well are…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: A Crafter’s Ethos

If you’re anything like me, you struggle to throw anything away that has even a smidgen of aesthetic and/or sentimental value.

The house is full of junk, it’s messy and difficult to clean, and you think, “why am I such a mug?” But then, on other days, you rustle up a cute birthday card that’s very personalised to the recipient for £0 because you had all the materials to hand, and you look at expensive “crafters’ materials” kits with snippets of ribbon, decorated paper & the like, and you think “am I the only one here who’s not a mug?!”

(Just in case this isn’t translating so well… in the UK, one of the many, many ways to call some a fool is “a mug”)

So, how to strike a happy medium so that your inner space-craver (or your long-suffering home-sharer/s!) get some joy? I have some suggestions…

Scrapbooking instead of photo albums

Imagine the scene: you’re on a trip with your fellow holidaygoer/s. You love taking photos & having snaps of yourself from holidays to be able to look back on, but they’re not so keen. So you force everyone to pose for a “proper photo” only a few times – next to major tourist attractions, maybe, or when you’re all in gear for a kayaking trip, etc. And you grab a few snaps along the way, on your phone maybe, of fun things you saw, and a few candid shots of people walking on the beach/the street/wherever.

So then you get home and look back at your snaps and you’ve got a range of resolutions and qualities of photograph, a few snaps of people, a bunch of pictures of random things, and you think, “shall I make an album out of this?”. Maybe you don’t think that. But if you do…

In this situation, I strongly encourage that you also collect up a few physical souvenirs too, tourist maps of the destination, tickets for museums/shows you went to, funny flyers, etc. Then, scrapbook the holiday instead of album-ing it.

If you’re going to keep it digital, scan the physical souvenirs in (you can then decide whether to keep them or not), and play around with the collection of images you have in a scrapbooking software.

If you’re doing a physical page (or two!), pull together the souvenirs you have, mess around with them on a page, and work out what spaces you have for photos. For this type of project, I’d recommend doing a standard size print of your favourite group shot, and save collage images of the candid shots and any other images that make the grade, to get one picture printed that you can then cut into its constituent parts and scatter across the page.

If you’re like me, you’ll have a stash somewhere of “pretty little things I might use one day”. Space allowing, chuck these all out on a table at once, and pick through to find good backing frames and/or edge trims for photos & tickets.

Often, I’ll use maps or funny adverts in newspapers I’ve picked up as a background for some or all of the page I’m making. Much cheaper than buying decorated pages!

I’ve touched on a lot of tools and techniques here in minimal detail. I’ll be going back to them on future Thursdays. Thanks for reading!