Alternative Scrapbooking

In addition to a traditional scrapbook album, there are many other ways to use your scrapbooking skills. The techniques of using photographs, papers and embellishments can be applied to lots of other projects.

When spending a large amount of time creating a scrapbook page, sometimes it can seem a bit disappointing to put it away in a scrapbook where not many people will probably see it. Instead, why not have your page framed? If there’s a page you have created that you really like, you could have a frame specially made specially fit it. Alternately, if you know in advance that you are going to want to frame a scrapbooking page you are going to create, you can purchase a frame ahead of time and make the page to suit.

Many pictures are also framed using card mounts which can either be bought in standard sizes or cut to your specific size.  These mounts can also become part of your project by adding embellishments, papers or doodling to them. You could try adding a title onto your mount, or continuing a pattern from your background papers.

One thing to be wary of is that if you’re using large embellishments on your project then you will need some way of being able to set your background off your frame. A black box is one way of adding depth to your frame.

One other way of hanging your creations on your wall is to create your page onto an artist’s canvas. Canvases can be purchased in many different sizes and you can also get black or natural canvases to add interesting backgrounds to your project.

You can stick papers, photographs and embellishments to your canvas, just as if you were creating a traditional page. You can either add eyelets and brads to your canvas (so long as you keep away from the wooden frame around the edges). Just be careful not to put too much pressure on the canvas, to keep it from ripping. It’s way too easy to ruin your canvas doing this. This is also a useful way of using canvases that have small dints or holes in them as they can be covered up.

One other craft that you can put your scrapbooking techniques to is altered art. You can alter almost anything – picture frames, tins, boxes and trays. A popular theme to altered art is books. You can create an altered book in a very similar way to a scrapbook. You’ll need to find an old book – you can pick them up cheap at a charity shop. You’ll need to stick several pages together using glue to create a sturdy page to work on. You can also work on the front of one page, then on the back of the second page so that you can stick them together…hiding any piece you have folded over the edges or backs of brads – this will leave you with a neater-looking book.

Then, you can create your pages on the pages of the book just like you would do with a scrapbook. The texts on the pages of the book lend to an interesting background but you can cover them up if it doesn’t suit the theme of your page. Also alter the front and back of the book to create a completed look. This sort of project is ideal as a gift for someone special.