Everything You Need For Scrap-booking

I want to share some of my favourite go to tools and reassure you that you don't really need very much to get started; but you can level up to a full arsenal of tools depending on the experience you want to have and the art you want to make. Here I present a cumulative list of tools that one by one improve your experience.

1. We will first need at least one or two knitting magazines we wish to scrap-book. If possible flick through them before purchasing, I look for images and colour palettes I am drawn to, patterns I like and adverts for yarns I would use. I would also keep in mind; magazines held together by staples are easier to take apart and therefore easier to scrap book. These also tend to have more pictures, articles and adverts. Magazines glued together are much harder to dissemble and work with but seem to have more content and usually higher quality content, especially containing more complex patterns.

   
   

2. Ideally we want to purchase a blank scrap-book. I would recommend a spiral wound book and would look for one that has as large a gap as possible between the paper and the spiral. This will give your scrap-book some growing room as you stick in additional pages and images and increase the thickness of the book.

   
   

3. Next we want a glue stick so that we can carefully tear out the images, articles and patterns that we love from our magazine and carefully stick them in our scrapbook. There are a whole host of glue's available on the market but a glue stick will suffice for most paper to paper sticking. There are a few decorative embellishments and scrap-booking tricks that do require stronger glue such as a super glue but a glue stick will get you pretty far.
   

4. The next item would be scissors. You probably already have some in your house, but if you don't I would definitely purchase them after the scrap-book if not at the same time. They give us a nice clean edge when removing and tidying up our scrap-booking pieces. At this point you have everything to keep you going for quite a while. I suspect most people would start off at this point gathering all of these at the same time and many would simply end their journey here merry as a lamb.
   

5. But if we wanted to press on further? I would next recommend a craft knife. These are fantastic for cutting right into the centre of glue spine magazines and lifting out those pages right from the edge without excluding any important details. They are also fantastic for making intricate paper and card décor to compliment your pieces on the page of your book.
   

6. I also love my paper trimmer sometimes known as a guillotine. It's great to be able to make straight clean cuts to tidy up images and patterns I wish to keep safe. Art can be messy but sometimes it can be perfectly trimmed edges.
   

7. Once I have my perfectly evenly trimmed patterns that I wish to keep safe I run them through my laminator. The perfect tool to make those fragile whisper thin magazine pages robust and as a bonus water proof. You could even use a white board marker to mark where you are in the pattern as you knit your next project.
   

8. Alas as much as I love my perfectly crisp sharp edges, sometimes a page calls for a softer approach. Here is where I reach for my corner trimmer. A completely unnecessary but none the less much loved staple of my crafting tool kit. The one I use has three depth options but I have seen many more options available on line. (That I will probably branch out to in the future).
   

9. Whilst we are in the paper craft isle collecting corner cutters it's short side step before we start perusing all those gorgeous packs of pattern printed paper-card. I have more than I care to admit but love to use them as layering and accent pieces in my scrap book to really change the landscape of my page. Although I definitely should have stopped picking up more several pads ago.
   

10. If you continue down the rabbit hole, stickers and other small embellishments can be a great addition to your hobby. I like to use small bows to add a little texture to a page. This is where that extra room we opted for earlier really starts to make a difference.
    

11. And of course, once you have started on the stickers you'll inevitably end up considering a cricut. This is a big leap so make sure you do plenty of research and look online at local second hand sale sites for an easy bargain. (When buying second-hand online never send money before receiving the item).

Scrap-booking if a very free form art and you can go in any direction really, draw, paint and add to your pages however you wish. It can be really nice to stretch into creative freedom after all of the pattern following of knitting.