If you’ve been visiting my blog for any length of time, you likely now that I was originally a scrapbooker. Making cards and 3-D items is totally a “new” past time for me.
Twelve years ago I officially caught the scrapbooking bug. Technically I started long before that by putting my photos in those (horrible) magnetic albums, perfectly captioned with clippings from my favorite magazines.
But it was about a decade ago when I really started scrapbooking in the traditional way we all think about it today.
When I first signed up as a Stampin’ Up demonstrator, I was so excited at the opportunity to include stamping in my scrapbooking. Since becoming such a compulsive card maker, my scrapbooking has sort of dwindled to nearly non-existent recently. So in an effort to get some pages done and show you the benefit of using stamps in your scrapbooks, I’m starting this 8-part series on scrapbooking with stamps. In it we’ll “talk” about eight great ways to use stamps in your scrapbooking.
Up first is using stamps as backgrounds on your pages. For this “Daddy’s Girl” page of my niece and her Dad, I used the Hello Doily background stamp (how appropriate, a background stamp!) to add some visual interest to my page, but without overtaking my photos.
That’s what I truly love about Stampin’ Up products: Coordination! My cardstock matches my ink, matches my ribbon (if I used any), matches my patterned paper, etc. It really makes designing a cinch!
I started this series by using stamps as backgrounds because this is one of my absolutely favorite ways to stamp on my pages. It adds such depth, but without distracting from our major focus — the photos!
Here is a close-up of the background stamping I did on this page. You can see it peeking out from under the yellow scallop circle.
I also stamped the Hello Doily Stamp randomly all over the darker purple cardstock (Concord Crush).
Beginning to scrapbook can be intimidating so I also want to point out another little tidbit about my process in creating this page.
The colors actually came from a combination of my niece’s school colors (purple & white) and her honor society sash around her neck (yellow). Initially, I was going to pull the blue out of my brother-in-law’s shirt and the yellow from her sash, but then I realized blue is the rival schools’ color — not a good idea!
All that to say, I usually do pull my colors directly from my photos as I find that the easiest method for color selection. Of course if you want super simple color ideas, check out the Stampin’ Up color coach! It’s a great tool and while it makes it easier if you use SU colors, you can also use it with other brands and companies’ colors, too — just get the closest match.
I hope you enjoyed the first part of this series. I’ll be back soon with part 2 focusing on creating borders with stamps!
If you have questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and I’ll answer them next time around. Thanks for visiting….
