scrapbookingmommy.com » scrapbooking template

3 Great Scrapbooking Templates – How To Use Them To Emphasize Your Theme

scrapnmom — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:42:47 +0000

When you’re creating a scrapbook, you’ll want to use a scrapbooking template that reflects your overall theme. If you’re not sure what theme to apply, then here are some ideas that may help you find a ready-made scrapbooking template or create your own.
1. Environmental
Environmental themes are very popular these days. Scrapbooking templates with an environmental theme include natural motifs incorporating plants, animals, and the basic elements – soil, water, and air. They portray the natural beauty of our planet and are perfect when your photos and memorabilia are related to outdoor and environment-related activities. Perfect embellishments for your environmental scrapbooking template could include that small pebble you found at the beach, a dried leaf or twig, or an Earth Day button or decal. This template is a perfect to present your nature trips, safaris, hiking and camping adventures, and wildly successful fishing trips.
2. Technological
Using a technological scrapbooking template are a great way to illustrate the passage of time and how much things have changed. They incorporate images and memorabilia related to any number of technologies – computers, cell phones, microchips, vehicles, space travel, and gadgets. A scrapbook with a technological scrapbooking template is perfect for that techno-geek in the family. It can document his or her evolution through different stages of techno-geekness. Or you can use the technological theme to showcase the houses you’ve lived in, moving up from a black-and-white portable television to a giant plasma wall-mounted screen. Your technological scrapbooking template will prove how tech-savvy you are and make your friends envy your modern attitude.
3. Athletic
One of the most popular scrapbooking templates reflects sports and fitness. Often selected to document a man’s life, it makes a masculine scrapbook free of ribbons and lace. Most sports-oriented scrapbooking templates reflect one of three elements:
Persona – A very popular scrapbooking template, this type of template showcases sports personalities popular to avid fans. You create a scrapbook for your favorite player or team. You can track their career, including photos, newspaper articles, and game reviews. If your man has a favorite sports celebrity, this scrapbooking template will make a great gift that you know he doesn’t have.
Team – This sports scrapbooking template can be based on the team’s symbol or mascot. You can showcase individual team players and stars. Demonstrating support for your favorite team or college, the team scrapbooking template is embellished with ticket stubs, treasured pieces of uniforms, and a color scheme based on team colors. This scrapbooking template is a great gift for team associations, alumni groups, and school classes.
Equipment – Based on the type of equipment used in sports, your equipment scrapbooking template can be designed around equipment for many sports, relying on the equipment for a more general sports theme, or the equipment for a specific sport with that sport as your focus. Cut-outs and die-cuts in the shape of the equipment makes great frames for photos and documents.
3. Emotional
Scrapbooking templates designed to represent the emotional nature of events rely on color and design to complement your photos and memorabilia and tell the whole story. Wedding-oriented scrapbooks tell a story of love and married life. Career-oriented scrapbooks describe challenges, struggles, and successes. Memorial scrapbooks express grief and sorrow for the loss of a loved one. You illustrate the emotion with color or characters.
Color – Bright and dark colors express different subtle emotional intensities that you can’t usually describe with pictures or scrapbook embellishments. And specific colors represent different emotions. Red denotes passion, courage, and action. White denotes innocence, love, and purity. Yellow represents energy and enthusiasm. Blue speaks of inner peace and spiritual love. You can use different shades or saturations of the same color to express different intensity of emotion.
Characters – Using characters is an effective way to express emotions. Facial expression is an easy way to communicate feelings. You can have your characters involved in different activities related to the photos and memorabilia on the page. Complementing your characters with background illustrations is also effective. For example, showing your character taking a walk in the rain could communicate solitude, sorrow, or sadness. Showing the same character on the beach in full sunlight would speak to joy, playfulness, and adventure.

Free Scrapbooking Templates – How To Find Them Online

scrapnmom — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:49:26 +0000

Using templates to create your scrapbook pages can be a great timesaver. Scrapbook templates help you be consistent in cropping your photos and in creating a more organized look. You can place them over photos, and they’re good tools for all your pages. Examples of the types of templates available include templates for journaling, cropping, and layout. And many templates are available without charge. Here are some reasons to use free scrapbooking templates.
1. Save Effort. Selecting a theme for scrapbook is no simple feat. Choosing colors, designs, and layout takes time and thought. Free scrapbooking templates save you from that chore. They also save you the task of researching different ideas and finding the right ones for your scrapbook project. By using free scrapbooking templates, things are already coordinated, and the pieces fit together well without work on your part.
2. Save Time. While great fun, scrapbooking is a time-consuming activity that many of us can’t afford today. Planning layout, design, and color schemes comes first. Assembling photos, mementos, and embellishments comes next. Then assembling everything into an attractive package requires a major time investment. We look everywhere for ways to save time, and free scrapbooking templates are a great time-saver. When you use free scrapbooking templates, you already have the basic page for your pictures. All you have to do is add your personal elements, and you’re done!
3. Save Money. You can spend a good deal of money creating your own template. Scrapbooking supplies and materials aren’t cheap, as any trip to the craft store will prove. By using free scrapbooking templates, you don’t have to invest your hard-earned dollar in a quality design. And you don’t have to buy new tools to create your own.
Can I find free scrapbooking templates on the Internet?
Yes. There are several websites dedicated to arts and crafts. They offer a variety of resources on home crafting projects, and they’re the most likely places to find free scrapbooking templates.
* Craft and Scrapbooking Websites
In addition to free scrapbooking templates, these sites offer valuable tips and advice for some great scrapbooking ideas. Many of them include photographs they’ve assembled into related sets to support various themes. You can search their sites for your theme or browse the designs they display. Although this is not a complete template, it gives you free building blocks to build your own templates. Rather than tying you down to someone else’s idea of what your scrapbook pages should look like, you can use these free resources and your own creativity to develop exactly what you want.
The websites offer groups of images and other elements focused on specific themes. You can browse these materials to find a theme you like. You can also search for a specific theme using a search engine like Google to find a site that may be dedicated to your theme. Many of these websites are designed specifically for people who want to use a theme for their scrapbooking project, and they may contain additional hints and information prepared by the person who created the specific template.
For scrapbookers who prefer that look of organized chaos, getting individual scrapbook components is also possible. Just remember that free scrapbooking templates help you organize your work around a single unifying theme and makes your scrapbook more attractive. After all, we usually create a scrapbook to memorialize a single event or idea, making templates ideal.
* Group Websites
Several sites provide free scrapbooking templates for their group. Members can create scrapbooks reflecting their group experience. Using these free scrapbooking templates gives you an opportunity to meet others with your interests and helps you build relationships with other group members through your scrapbooking project. You can compare each others’ work and get new ideas.
These are just a few ideas about using free scrapbooking templates for your next scrapbooking project. Whether you want a complete page template or elements, you can find them at one of many websites dedicated to scrapbooking. Not only do they offer the template, most of them also offer careful instructions that show you how to use it. Adding your own touches, of course, makes the design yours and your scrapbook more interesting and unique.