No consultant for any company taught me to scrapbook. In fact, I think some would say Close To My Heart is responsible for what I do know about scrapbooking. They would be wrong. Ok, so I learned a lot about cardmaking from Close To My Heart's Card Confidence program taught me the foundations of card making, and especially layout design.
The thing I mainly attribute the scrapbooking I do is trial and error. Now I'm sure you're saying, "Well duh!" Let me explain. When I first started scrapbooking, I would flip through the magazines dedicated to scrapbooking or the Idea Books and say to myself "I couldn't make anything like that." Then I'd put them back and try something out of my own brain, and get frustrated because it didn't look good to me, and it didn't look 'professional'. I'm self-critical like that. Then it dawned on me one day that the reason the magazines and Idea Book had pictures of the projects in them is so that you could copy what the person had done (another "Well, duh!" moment). As I started shamelessly copying the projects in the book and through trial and error, I learned most of what I know now.
Here are some 'ah-hah's' that helped me overcome my self-criticism:
Ah-hah #1 - You Can't Do It Wrong - if it looks good to you, comparing how 'good' it is to other people's work will just frustrate you (this can be applied to just about anything in life). Sure, there's some work that is more pleasing to look at to other people but may not be everyone's cup of tea. Plus, if you never try anything new or give yourself permission to expirment, you'll never know what you could have learned.
Ah-hah #2 - Never Glue Anything Down Until Its Done - This is gospel for me when I'm card making or scrapbooking. I've had too many times where I starting doing one thing, glued it down, got inspiration to do something else, like wrapping a ribbon around a framing mat, and had to either start over again or pull it up. You'll save yourself a ton of headaches by just waiting until your satisfied to glue it!
Ah-hah #3 - Let the Pictures Be Your Guide - One of the secrets of professional scrapbookers is to coordinate the paper with colors contained in the photo. Its not too different from choosing make up or wearing clothes. You have a picture of a cheerleader in her cute blue and white uniform, but you pick oranges and browns for your paper and ink schemes and something's not going to look right, no matter how cute the paper is. Another tip in this section that will ease your hair-pulling tendancies is choose your photos in advance. Some groups will look better together than others, so depending on how many photos you want on a particular layout, you can better determine the layout needed. Example: You have a set of sequential pictures of your son driving off the diving board for the first time. You're going to want to pick a layout that allows for a lot of small photos.
Ah-hah #4 - Mistakes Are Your Friends - This may sound like I'm going back on everything thing I've encouraged you to do so that you can avoid frustration, but really its the fastest way to 1) learn what not to do and 2) create something totally unexpected.
Like the student learning to paint in the Renaissance, copy your favorite scrapbooker again and again until the 'click' of understanding comes. Learn your craft - study magazine and book as much as you can. Join a scrapbooking group - more experienced scrapbookers can give you advice or hints or even tell you something you never even thought of. Eventually, even someone as color challenged as me, you will be able to sit at a table full of supplies and relish the challenge of creating something not only memorable but beautiful.
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