Are you getting ready for Christmas? Our tree is up, and we got our outside lights up. This Saturday, I am having the ladies from church over for our 3rd Annual Ladies' Gathering. Two years ago, we had an ornament exchange, and last year we all contributed recipes for a cookbook. This year, we are going to focus on growing together and building one another up. I think it's going to be great. You'll get to read all about it soon. Also, I am going to make my marshmallow snowmen again this year, and that will be next week's post.In June, my husband and I started our own business, Redding Creative Arts. We offer photography and scrapbooking services to our customers. I have gotten a couple of very large scrapbooking orders lately, and while I can't give away all of my trade secrets, I wanted to take a moment to share some things that are very simple that have a huge impact.
The first thing I want to tell you about is a really great website with down-loadable fonts for scrapbooking, card-making, and whatever other things you might want to type:) KevinandAmanda.com is a blog that has links to free scrapbooking fonts, and Fonts for Peas! The free handwriting fonts section is where I got the font for the Happy Birthday title later in the post, as well as the labels for my pictures. These are adorable, and I am so excited to tell you about them! You can click on the buttons below to go and take a look around.
When I first started scrapbooking, I was awed by the number of products available, and overwhelmed by the expense of some of them. I have learned to buy paper when it's on sale, but for awhile, the thought of using extra paper made me worry about how much money I was spending. After reading many magazines, and seeing the results myself, I have decided it is worth the the expense to use the extra paper (and if you buy it on sale, it's okay,... right?)
Sometimes, it seems like pictures get lost on the paper when you scrapbook them. Matting helps to keep this from happening. It gives your picture emphasis with a little "frame." The frame helps to guide your eye to the item you want to emphasize, and kind of forces the background paper to stay in the background.
Even with all of the scrapbooking I have done, I still have to remind myself that matting is important. If I don't use a mat, it seems like something is missing, and I usually end up adding one.
Another example with solid colors:
How about a double mat? Quick, easy--and great results. Just use contrasting colors!
I love using mats. They are probably the easiest thing you can do for impact on your pages. If you are using a solid color background page, you could use a patterned paper for the mat. Also, if you are double-matting your photos on a patterned background, you can use a different patterned paper in matching colors for your top mat. (I don't have a specific picture of that, but you can see it on the edges of the first example photos, where I matted with striped paper on yellow to put with the flowered background.)
******To put mats on your photos, adhere your photo to your matting paper (I use photo mounting squares) and then trim your mat to fit the picture. I find that it is easier to cut the mat if I can see where the picture is. (Occasionally, I do get the picture slightly off center. When that happens, I CAREFULLY lift the picture and put it back on. If you buy the photo mounting squares labeled "initially repositionable," this is easier to do.) If you want to double mat your photo, simply adhere the single-matted photo to another piece of paper and trim again.******
If you are thinking of trying to start a scrapbook, I hope this helps you. I love your comments! Do you have a favorite scrapbooking technique, or something you want to learn how to do?
Stop by next week for marshmallow snowmen!
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