Three Sketches: Scrapbook Border Ideas in a Snap
11 July 2012
Author: Julie Bateman
Sketches are an easy way to jumpstart the creative process. Add the ease of border punches, border stickers or punched shape borders and you have a recipe for scrapbooking success. With these three sketches and a few scrapbook border ideas, you can change, flip, and substitute until your creation is just right!
Choosing a Sketch:
What makes you choose a sketch to work with? The number of photos, a particular title style, a cool border, a clever embellishment?
Keep in mind you can take elements of different sketches and combine them until you have created your own unique “recipe”.
Keep a small notebook in your purse to jot down sketches and ideas. You never know where inspiration will strike - a magazine ad, the colors of a dress, costume jewelry, merchandise packaging and more.
Be open to the creative opportunities that present themselves in everyday life and be prepared to write them down.
Scrapbook Border Ideas:
Borders are a great tool to have in your scrapbook pantry.
You can stock up on ready-made borders and use punches to create your own borders. Think outside the box as well - leftover stickers, buttons, charms, etc.
Here are some handy scrapbook border ideas-
- Use your punches to create a photo border from small square or circle punches. Not only is it eye catching, it uses up extra photos.
- Use your border punches as a stencil (try using the negative piece as well) with an inking mist and save money on expensive plastic stencils.
- Use embellishments to create borders or add dimension to flat borders. Add stickers, buttons, ribbon, and stitching to give a border some extra spice and flavor.
Sketch Recipe #1:
This sketch focuses on using border punches around the peripheral area of the layout.
Although the border punch edges might not line up perfectly, the use of embellishments in each corner will cover any edges that are unaligned.
The corner embellishments can be used to tie in the theme of the layout, in our case, a pet/animal layout. Use your imagination and see other possibilities in the corners such as party hats for a birthday layout, spiders for Halloween and holly sprigs for Christmas.
Sketch Recipe #2:
This sketch highlights border stickers. Solid or patterned paper border stickers are a great way to incorporate secondary and tertiary colors to your layouts.
Border stickers are also a great divider for your layouts. They can be used to help separate a heavy bottom portion from the upper area as in Sketch #2. The border stickers not only separate the pattern paper heavy bottom, they are also used as a “photo shelf” to tuck the photos into.
Want to fully coordinate your layout? Use border punches to create long borders from coordinating paper. Vary the length and width of your border for a fun look.
Sketch Recipe #3:
The last sketch shows the versatility of using shape punches, embellishments and die cuts together to make your own scrapbook borders.
You can use simple shaped punches (think circle, square, stars, flowers and seasonal punches), flat or 3D stickers, die-cuts, buttons and more to link together to form a border anywhere on your page.
This is a great way to use scraps, extra stickers, a stash of buttons and so much more.
You can even mix these elements for something fun and unique, vintage and soft, black and white, etc.
Combine these 3 simple sketches with your favorite scrapbook border ideas to create endless easy scrapbook pages!