Help me get scrappy!
December 30, 2016 12:49 PM   Subscribe

I want to put together a combination before/after photo album from a major project with other non-photo paperwork. Is this scrapbook territory? Please help think of a good way to display this stuff or help me scrapbook.

My husband and I just finished a massive home renovation. YAY!

I took before photos and am taking after photos and want to put together an album. However, because this was the type of renovation that required us to move out and to amass crazy permits and other fun stuff from our city, we want to put those in the album as well, along with a few other clippings.

Please help me think of the best way to do this! I was originally thinking of just a regular photo album, but my trip to two different big box stores and an art supply store brought me home empty handed.

Is this more of scrap booking territory than photo album territory? If so, how do I scrapbook? I know zero about scrapbooks.
posted by floweredfish to Media & Arts (4 answers total)
 
I have made similar scrapbooks. I recommend zots for the attachment of things to the pages and I like Pioneer's line of pages and books. They are both widely available - michaels, Amazon, maybe walmart. I favor the 12x12 square pages and the kind where you put the pages into sheet protectors to keep all the scraps and bits protected. There are lots of kinds of double sided sticky things to attach photos but some of them are disappointingly unsticky, hence my preference for the zots. (Scotch tape is usually not a good idea - any ink it touches or pigment in paper will tend to bled through the tape's adhesive layer.)
posted by Tandem Affinity at 12:57 PM on December 30, 2016


I would create a custom-printed album from Shutterfly or similar (but not Snapfish if you actually want to receive the thing, in my experience) and either leave blank pages where you can attach the paperwork or scan those items and include them as if they were photos.
posted by lakeroon at 8:34 PM on December 30, 2016


Seconding lakeroon on the Shutterfly album. I made one documenting our construction process and it turned out great! I did scan or photograph our odd paperwork, but leaving blank pages to attach them to would work just as well, though your book will be lumpy-er with the attachments.
posted by sarajane at 5:34 AM on December 31, 2016


If so, how do I scrapbook? I know zero about scrapbooks.
Decide on a size. If you have things that are 8 1/2 x 11 inches, you probably want a 12 x 12 book. You can fit up to 6 pictures that are 4x6 on one 12x12 page. It looks better to have only 3-4 on each page, though and leave some empty space. You can buy scrapbooking kits that will have the blank pages, plastic covers and book covers all in one. Most will include stickers and other themed items that may or may not fit your style. You can buy each of those things by themselves, too. You glue everything to the page and then slip it inside the plastic page cover. Your standard book cover will come with 10 or 20 page covers and each page cover will hold 2 pages, front and back. For the pages themselves, you can use cardstock or specific scrapbook paper that is often less stiff and thinner than even lightweight cardstock. For your project, you might want to use graph paper or blueprints as the background.

Next you need to find glue, glue dots or double-sided tape pieces to affix everything. There will probably be a whole aisle of scrapbook adhesives at any craft store.

I divide my projects into a few different "chapters" and then evaluate each chapter to see how many pages I think it will take. I try to keep them roughly in chronological order. You might want to do house sections instead. Then I layout a page or two at a time without any gluing. Once everything fits and looks nice, I glue it all down.

Other nice things to have: Good scissors, since you might want to take 1/8 inch off something to fit it in; Markers for writing if you have good handwriting; Letter stencils if you don't; Rulers.
posted by soelo at 11:36 AM on January 3, 2017


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