How to Get Started Scrapbooking Part 4

For your page embellishments, I decided to make two tags. An embellishment can be anything, actually, that you add to your page besides journaling (your writing) and your photos. The most common embellishment is a tag, which I believe Rebecca Sauer was the first to add to a page. What's lovely about tags? They can be any size, any shape, and the common hole allows you to easily insert a ribbon. I added these to a background page, so you could see yet another way to make a background--by running a strip of patterned paper down one side of a page. In this case, I added a narrow stripe which is actually a Mrs. Grossman's sticker. She makes a variety of thin, stripe stickers that I seem to return to again and again.

Dressing Up Your Tag

Now...I restricted myself some when making these tags. I have all sorts of things I could have added, but I tried to stay fairly simple. What I've learned about tags is they are sort of like books. About 2/3 of the way through making one, you think, "This is crud. Looks awful." But you must keep going. Don't give up. Just keep adding stuff and playing and moving things around until you get something you like. I keep a small plastic container full of odd letters, pieces of paper, extra punched flowers and so on, just for adding to tags.

Family Sayings

But the best resource I have is probably the full sheet of family sayings and titles that I made some time ago. If you'd like it, email me at JoannaSlan@aol.com and I'll pop it to you through the 'net. (But I'll also add you to my ezine list unless you tell me not to.)

By having those sayings and words preprinted, I can add them quickly to any tag. It took a while to do it because I'm not good with textboxes. But, I can use it over and over. I printed the family verbiage on colored paper but you could also print it on white and add chalk to color it. I let the words take center stage on the tags, adding a flower and a sticker of lace and another sticker stripe of shiny copper.

Creating Your Tag Shape

If you don't have access to a tag you can trace, they're pretty easy to draw. Just make a rectangle and indent the top of one edge. Punch your hole in the middle of the indented top.

Tag Placement

You can put them anywhere on your page. If you adhere your photos first, as I suggested, you'll see where tags would be a natural fit. Just remember, if you have writing on your tag, you'll want to attach it so the writing is readable.

Okay...there you go. You know how to scrapbook. (Honest. It wasn't that hard, was it?)