Save Money by Creating Your Own Scrapbook Albums

Here’s a really great way to save money by creating your own scrapbook albums! Have your heard of the Bind-It-All from Zutter? It’s awesome!

What is it?

It’s a binding machine. But not just an ordinary binding machine, this one will punch and bind allowing you to create your own books, journals, calendars, craft projects and most importantly scrapbooks of any size!

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Digital Scrapbook Layouts of the Week 1

I’m gonna try to select a “Digital Layout of the Week”, every week, and deconstruct the design process for the benefit of any newbies to the digital world and for the veterans, maybe we can learn something new! Please leave your comments and questions and I’ll be happy to answer.

This week we have two single photo digital scrapbook layouts, “Cuddly” and “Sweetie”. Here’s how these were created along with notes on the software used:

1. PhotoShop or Illustrator?

It’s up to you. If you want to edit your photos (ie. add effects) then PhotoShop is better. But, both have similar tools and are compatible with each other. I sometimes create patterns, doodles or a drawing of something (like the giraffe and bear) in Illustrator and later open them in PhotoShop and make the rest of the layout there. For this weeks layouts I used Illustrator only.

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Freehand Doodle In Your Scrapbook

If you like to doodle here’s a great way to do it and have it cut it out at the same time to add more detail to your scrapbook layouts. Using Fiskar’s Craft Knife Fingertip you can now cut as you doodle. You hold it just like you would a pen except that it cuts rather than draw! This is an easy way to make your layouts unique. If you prefer a more symmetrical look use a stencil to draw out your doodle then cut it out with scissors, but remember, your pages are more personalized and special using the freehand method.

This tool is also great when you have to cut duplicates of things like letters or flowers or other embellishment for a project you want to look uniform. It’s easy on your hands, less tiring than using scissors.

Here’s what it looks like:

The cheapest I’ve seen it at is $3.59 on Create for Less.