A cou­ple of you have asked me how to get started with scrap­book­ing. Since there were so many links I wanted to share, I decided to make this into a blog post. Much quicker

You will need a few basic sta­ples to start scrap­book­ing. These are my favorites:

Card­stock: If you are going to be scrap­book­ing a lot, you will need neu­tral card­stocks– white, cream and kraft. I buy them mostly at amazon.com. Neenah paper has bet­ter qual­ity stuff, but they are more expensive

Scrap­book­ing is all about your pho­to­graphs. I print mine at Costco and Shut­ter­fly. Another great place I have heard of is Per­snick­ety prints. Nowa­days, I also print them off my com­puter using my printer– because some­times I just need to print that photo and scrap it imme­di­ately, all at 1am in the night

Now your lay­outs can be either 12 by 12 inches in size or 8.5 by 11 inches. The most com­mon size used these days is the 12 by 12, though you can buy albums for both these sizes read­ily. The odd 8 by 8 sized albums also exist, though I havent seen any one use them of late…

Adhe­sives: Any­thing you use to scrap­book has to be archival safe. That means that, 20 years down the lane, the adhe­sive will not ruin your album by dis­col­or­ing it. Right now I have two tape run­ners that I use a lot, this one from Glue arts  and another from Scotch.

For liq­uid adhe­sives, I use Glossy Accents- its strong and durable; some times some Mod podge for decoupaging.

I some­times use this Scotch glue stick when I have a lot of paper to adhere. Its also my back up glue, since my daugh­ter runs away with my adhe­sives

To give dimen­sions, I use a lot of these foam squares and glue dots.

As a begin­ner, the tape run­ner should do. You can always expand more slowly, as you learn more and more.

Next, lets talk tools: Fiskars tools are awe­some! You will need atleast one good pair of scis­sors, and one micro scis­sor to do all of your detailed fussy cutting.

To get your paper cut into straight lines, you will need a paper trim­mer and this one is my favorite- coz its small, handy and does an awe­some job!

There are a ton of punches avail­able– Cor­ner punches, Bor­der punches and Lever punches. These are pricey, so pick up a few to start with– cir­cles and squares shaped ones are very ver­sa­tile– and the 1 inch and 2 inch sizes are the ones you might use the most at first. The heart shape is a win­ner too.

This doily punch, a new one from JBS is a com­plete favorite of mine. I have used it over and over again ever since I got it. It never gets put away.

You will also need a good pen to add jour­nal­ing. I use Le Pen. I adore these pens, and I have two of each color, since I always seem to be search­ing for them on my messy table. While buy­ing pens as well– check to see if they are archival safe.

Last, but most impor­tantly, you will need pretty stuff to jazz up your lay­outs. Here you have end­less options. I can­not really nar­row this down for you. You get pat­terned papers, stick­ers, alphas, chip­board accents, wood veneers, stamps, inks… I mean the list goes on and on. Two of my favorite man­u­fac­tur­ers right now are Octo­ber After­noon and  Amer­i­can Crafts.

I also love using kits while scrap­book­ing. Every­thing is pre coor­di­nated and that makes things go quicker. I do remem­ber the days when I would pull out my papers and sort through them, spend­ing hours choos­ing which ones to use. I have always been a slow scrap­per. But since I dont have that kind of time on my hands these days (spend­ing time with squeal­ing gig­gling lit­tle girls is way more fun, BTW) I use a lot of kits. Two of my favorites are Stu­dio Cal­ico (they do inter­na­tional ship­ping!!!) and Echo park.

Hope this answers some of your queries. If you need any more info, or have more to ask, leave me a com­ment below, and I will reply in the com­ments itself.

Heads up, I have a sim­i­lar “if you are just start­ing to scrap­book– dig­i­tally” post com­ing up soon. I want to say tomor­row, but lets not jinx it. Its been sit­ting in my drafts folder for a few weeks now