Don't forget to scrap the bad.

When thinking of your scrapbooking pages and albums, don’t forget the bad times. I remember a few years back when my husband was having some heart troubles a friend telling me not to forget to scrap the bad times. We generally think of the good and happy times, when in reality we have bad times also that define our lives. My scrapbook pages included some of the different types of doctors that attended to my husband; cardiologist, electro physiologist, and his primary physician. Then there were the tests; stress tests, nuclear stress test, blood work, many EKG’s, and EEG’s. Embellishments included doctor’s appointment cards, electrodes (from wearing the heart monitor), unused prescription cards, and heart stickers. So don’t forget the bad times when you are scrap booking, whether is be broken bones, the loss of a family member or friend, or whatever it may be. My son hid his under-aged drinking citation because he knew what I was thinking!

Simple scrapbooking page ideas to make your pages “Pop”.

Making your scrapbooking page ideas “pop“ can be simple if you follow a couple simple rules. I like to incorporate the coloring in the pictures into the scrapbook page idea layout. Try to find a couple of contrasting colors within your pictures in which to choose papers for matting the pictures and making borders. A simple scrapbooking page idea would be to decide if you wanted to single mat or double mat your pictures. Keep in mind that if you are scrapping on white pages, that your bottom mat color is not too light or it will fade into the background instead adding that bit of “pop” to your scrap booking page idea. The same is true if your pictures have a very light background. One example I had was pictures taken at the beach on a hazy day. The pictures had great depth and content. I tried to use a light blue-green paper and it just made the pictures look washed out and uninteresting. Then I used a dark blue-green paper next to the same pictures and they just “popped”. I used the lighter color to double mat some of the pictures which would be mounted on top of a patterned background paper. For this scrap booking page idea I used the patterned background paper, which has both of the mat colors in it to make a border at top of the page and towards the bottom of the facing page. Simple designs with the “pop” I was looking for.