If you're a little uncertain of where and how to exactly start your scrapbook layout, here are a few things that I found were good in helping me when I first started out. Remember that you may wish to be a little more adventurous, or you may prefer another of method to make things easier for yourself. There are no rules in scrapbooking. Trying to find the confidence to be couragous and explore your own creativity can be challenging and fun - sometimes it does also help to get a bit of a hand!! :) 

Scrapbook Theme

The first thing you need to decide upon is a theme for your layout. This can often depend upon your photographs also, so the two can go hand-in-hand. Once you have this, it will be much easier to select your materials. The easiest theme to keep through a layout is colour and probably the best to stick to if you're just starting out. Keep reading in order to help you pick your theme.

Choosing Photographs 

Select 4 or 5 pictures with a similar theme, such as an event, a particular place etc. You may not use all of these but it's great to be able to pick and choose. In fact starting your first few layouts with only 1 or 2 photos, can often be make it easier.

Selecting Scrapbooking Papers 

Choose your paper. Don't be too frightened by this, try one of the following two ways;

1. Choose a colour within your photos, be it the background, eyes or a piece of clothing
2. Pick the colour that best describes your subject. You can try using your subject's favourite colour, or if your pictures are of the family skiing vacation, you may want to choose a traditional colour such as cool blues and/or white, or browns for an autumn theme etc. Keep in mind that you don't want this colour to clash with anything within the photographs.

Once you have an idea of what colour you would like, start off by finding one range from a manufacturer that jumps out at you. As a beginner it's best to choose papers only from this particular range, that way it will make it easier to coordinate them. Once you get the hang of it, choosing papers from a mixture of different manufacturers and lines will be easy.

To begin with you may wish to choose three pieces of different patterned paper.

If you find this difficult to start off with, I find that sticking to 

• 1 design of stripe paper or similar
• 1 design of flower/circle paper or similar
• 1 design of solid/washed fairly plain paper or similar 

is pretty safe and alot of manufacturers have these designs or something of the like as a standard line. 

I would next recommend choosing at least 1 or 2 pieces of plain coloured cardstock, especially if you do not have a piece of plain paper within your paper selection. I love textured cardstock, once I discovered it, there was no going back. This entirely is up to you, I find it adds more depth.

Scrapbook Elements

When first starting out we can all try to cram alot of techniques and embellisments into the one layout. For you first scrapbook layout, it's best to keep it as simple as possible. Perhaps encorporate 1 or 2 embellishments and 1 technique if you have seen one you would like to try out. Remeber to keep with the same theme for your embellishments. Even your techniques can have an effect on your theme, for example sanding or inking edges can give an older, distressed look which is great for scrapping family heritage pages.

Scrapbook Layout

Where do I start?!! Trust your eye, this is the best key in creating visually pleasing layouts. Throughout working on a page, I often stop to place it at a distance and stand back to see where my eye is lead on the page. I then decide whether if that's where I want my viewer's eye to be attracted to and I then make any necessary changes. My layouts never end up looking like how I had originally planned!

When starting out, looking at other designs to help you is a great way of getting the feel of things. Often called scraplifting (when one person chooses to copy another person's layout) this is how alot of scrapbookers start out. Scraplifting is frowned upon if you are publicly publishing the layout as your own, but for your own personal purpose it's more than acceptable. This is why there are so many galleries out there, to help you! You may even wish to add aspects of several different layouts you have seen to the one page that you're creating.

Within the Scrappy Shack Gallery we have examples of cards, crafting projects, scrapbook layouts and layout sketches. Layout Sketches are also a great way to get started. They're simplified samples of how to place items such as photos, titles, journaling and embellishments on a page.

Connecting your Layout

It's best not to attach anything to the page until you have everything laid out on the page. This way you can move things around if they don't quite look right or you can completely change them.

Once you have all of your elements in place you can them adhere them. For help on which adhesives work best, view our Guide to Adhesives.

In summing up, I'll repeat what I first said at the beginning of the article; there are no rules in scrapbooking. Just because you hear rules such as 'green and blue shall never be seen' doesn't mean it won't be visually attractive to you, or your viewer. Trust your own eye's judgement!