Tips for beginning scrapbookers

A friend of mine on Facebook mentioned to me that she is starting an album for her son and is a bit overwhelmed. That got me thinking about how so many people never end up scrapbooking because they are overwhelmed by the prospect of it. Here's my advice for the beginner scrapbooker:

• Start simple, pick an event or finite time period to scrapbook. For example, your wedding, a vacation, your child's first few months or year of life.
• Remember that there are no real rules.
• Start with a kit. There are so many kits on the market now that make it easy for you to have virtually all the supplies you need to get started so that you can avoid the overwhelming scrapbooking aisles at the store.
• Get together with friends to scrapbook. This is a great way to share ideas, tools, and conversation. You'll get to try and see things that your friends have and decide if you need them for yourself.
• The 2 tools that you must have are adhesive, and a paper trimmer (one that can cut 12 inch paper is preferred since most papers come in 12x12 size)
• Don't feel pressured to scrapbook every photo that you have. If you have time to do that it's great, but you don't want to be overwhelmed by the burden of a huge stack of photos to scrapbook.
• Enjoy the pictures while you scrapbook. One of the reasons I love scrapbooking so much is that I get to relive the moments captured by the pictures while I'm assembling them into a page.
• Find inspiration. You can be inspired just by the pictures that you have, by ideas you get from your friends, ideas online or in magazine, anything around you. Opening yourself up to new ideas can often help you get motivated to sit down to scrapbook.