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Scrapbook and Stamping Tips from Laura Childs

You can use your favorite rubber stamps to decorate beverage glasses, glass votive candles, or even mirrors and windows. When it’s time to clean up, colorful stamp pad ink can be removed in a flash using ordinary glass cleaner.

Using a piece of fabric as background for your photographs adds texture, dimension, and color. Also consider snippets of embroidery, antique lace, scraps of baby clothing, or a piece from a wedding veil.

Glassine envelopes, incorporated into your scrapbook pages, are perfect for holding photos, old letters, valentines, beads, trinkets, sand dollars, a bird feather, dried rose petals, a single earring, etc. Envelopes also give your scrapbooks a fun, interactive quality.

Scrapbook pages are more interesting when you tell the complete story surrounding an event. Get pictures of the before, the during, and the after. For example, a page detailing a child’s birthday could be told with the before (getting dressed or decorating), the during (the party), and the after (the family dog lapping a plate of cake crumbs).

The same scrapbooking techniques you’ve perfected for your albums can also be used to create beautiful collages that can be framed. Family photos, old letters, and precious documents can be mounted together in a picture frame, then displayed on a wall or desk.

Use your paper punches to create other interesting shapes. For example, if you have a heart punch and a circle punch, you can create a flower. Punch out a single circle to use as the center, then a dozen or so heart shapes to use as petals.

Since so many family events center around food, be sure to include recipes in your scrapbook. Use colorful recipe cards or print your recipe on a die-cut (a nice big apple, for example!).