Scrapbooking became in the past years my favorite hobby. I started scrapbooking at the end of 2004, almost a year after my son was born. Although I knew what scrapbooking was, I had no idea how to get started, so I made a few researches on the internet before start shopping. This way I wouldn't end up buying lots of unnecessary material. The art of scrapbooking is gaining more popularity in Brazil each year, but even though, the variety of material in stores is extremely reduced and very hard to find in Rio. General themes or themes for boys are very scarce. It's easier to find what I need in Brazilian scrapbooking sites than in stores, but most of the material sold in Brazil is imported, thus, very expensive. For this reason, I do all my shopping on the internet (US sites), mostly on eBay. I need to pay for the international shipping, but it's even cheaper than buying in Brazil. Besides, the variety of material I can find on the Internet is much larger than in Brazilian sites or stores.   The picture below shows some of the layouts I made for my pregnancy album (12" x 12"). Most of the material I used for this album (24 pages) are from Karen Foster, Bazzil and Basic Grey.       - Websites where I usually shop - When I travel to the United States, I seize this opportunity to make all my shopping on the internet. The websites where I have usually shop when I am in the USA are: Legacy Scrapbooking, Rocky Mountain Hobbies, Creative Express, Scrapbookpal, KTCrafts, Scrapbbok Express, Scrapbook.com, Scrappotamus, Crafter's Toy Box, Two Peas in a Bucket and Cropping Corner. Some of the stores where I always buy when in the US are AC Moore and Michaels. They always have great sales and discount coupons. There is a great number of nice sites on the Internet and I always find interesting ones. It is amazing to see the variety of material they have to offer. When I am not travelling abroad, I shop on eBay and have the itens shipped to Brazil. I can find almost everything I need on eBay. :o) Recently I have also tried digital scrapbooking. I have already bought lots of beautiful kits on the Internet. After I print what I want to use, I crop everything and work with the printed material just like I do with the papers I buy in the stores. It's hard to see the difference from what I print at home and what I buy in stores. - How I get started - When I begin an album, what works best for me is making a list of what I want to register (pregnancy, birth, wedding, travels, family meetings etc), so I will not forget anything. Then I write down what I want do for each theme. When I take a picture I like, I save it together with some papers, stickers and other embelishtments I would like to use with that picture. I also add notes about the picture (when it was taken etc) so when I have time to work on my layouts I will not have to worry about remembering dates etc. I put everything in storage envelopes, which makes it much easier to work on a layout when I have some free time. I just need to pick up an evelope and start working on the layout, everything I need will be stored there. I have many ideas, I just have little time to work on all projects. - Tools I consider a "must have" - There are many tools that every scrapbooker must have. I found out with time and practice which is important to have and which is unecessary. Items I consider the most useful for me and which I can't live without are: distressing inks (I use Tim Holtz Ranger Ink Distress Pads the most), a good paper trimmer (I use one by Fiskars ); a good scissors (I use Cutter Bee Scissors by EK Success) and of course, good adhesives (my favorite adhesives are EK Success Dotto Adhesive and EK Success Hermafix Vario Tabs Adhesive). I also use the liquid adhesives occasionally, but prefer the "non-messy" ones. I particularly don't like the sticks. I tried different brands (good ones) and with time the photos and papers started to fall off the layouts. I store all my papers in Cropper Hopper vertical paper organizers. One organizer can hold up to 200 papers. Really good. - Tools not so necessary, but very useful - There are many useful tools that we can use to make our scrapbook pages more beautiful. If you want to invest some money on it, you will not regret it. I use a lot: corners, border and shape punches. I have also bought myself a QuickKutz machine which I use a lot to make the titles on my pages. I have one Studio classic font, one CK Typist mini and one Styletto skinny mini. The skinny minis are really small and are not useful for titles, but the minis and classic will do the trick. I love the CK Typist font and it's the one I use the most. When I started scrapbooking it all seemed complicated, but with time and practice everything became easier. In the beginning I was totally lost, didn't know how to begin. Today scrapbooking is my favorite hobby, the more I do, the more I want to do. It is important not to let the abundance of information and the initial excitement become something stressful. Scrapbooking is a great therapy. :o)   - Some of my Layouts - These are some of the layouts I made for my son's Travel Album in 2008 (8" x 8"). All of these layouts were made using digital kits I bought from Scrap Girls and Scrapbook-Bytes and some I made myself. I made the journaling and titles on the computer and cropped everything. Then I put them together using foam adhesives and EK Success Dotto adhesives. I embelished the layouts with Prima flowers, Making Memories brads, eyelets and Creative Impressions ribbons. Making Memories brads are my favorite, has great colors.     More layouts for the Travel Album. Some of these were made with digital kits from Scrap Girls, Shabby Princess and Scrapbook-Bytes. Other layouts were made with papers bought in stores (Junkitz, Basic Grey and Scenic Route brands). The layouts were embelished with Prima flowers, Making Memories brads, eyelets, varied ribbons and rick-racks. All the journaling and titles were made in the computer, cropped and distressed. I just LOVE distressing. :o) If you have never tried scrapbooking, give it a try. You will certainly fall in love with it.       :: Back to the Crafts Corner Menu :: This page was created on December 8, 2008. [ Site Menu ] [ Home ] ~ Graphics by Recycle Bin Graphics ~ Some backgrounds scanner from cardstocks ~ Nothing in this site is Public Domain. Graphics are copyrighted by various artists and are used with permission. Please, click on the links above to visit the websites were you can download the graphics from. Do NOT save anything from my pages, please.