6 More tips for Free and Discount Scrapbooking supplies

Here are six more tips for your scrapbooking layouts... simple but effective!!

1. Keep your scraps to make up cards and to experiment with paper collage techniques. These collages can be used as backgrounds for your scrapbooking layouts. Also scraps are perfect for small albums, like 4x4” albums, etc.

2. Freebies from magazines - embellishments and papers. I currently subscribe to Scrapbook Inspirations which has free papers and a gift every month such as chipboard tags, stick-ons, blank mini album. The great thing about it is that the papers are quite often colours or designs out of my “comfort zone” and I find them really useful for broadening my design horizons.

3. Network with other scrapbookers, swap supplies. At Scrapbuddies (our local monthly crop) we often swap items of which we have loads and want to give out to like minded people who will find a use for them.

4. Take photos of signs and then cut out for fun letters for use on scrapbooking layouts. (Don’t forget that you don’t have to print them onto glossy photo paper either.)

5. Make your own stamps using foam. The type to which I refer is the really dense stuff (Plaid decorator blocks). They come already cut into shapes, but you can also buy a blank sheet. These are great for making up backgrounds or for just repeated images. Just use a sharp craft knife, it’s a cheap way to gain custom designed stamps.

6. Use children’s paintings as backgrounds for scrapbooking layouts. I have used my daughter’s “splashings” of paint as backgrounds for some pages (see picture above). Some of the colour combinations are great and at the moment she is completely covering a whole page with paint (the only bit left blank is where the bulldog clip was holding the paper to the stand!!!). I do double check the acidity of the paper… and so far so good! Also their scribblings using coloured pencils and crayons work well.