With the turn of the season, many scrapbook page designers and paper crafters are looking for inspiration to start new projects. Warmer weather provides greater opportunities to explore a wider variety of themes for pictures and layouts. The following ideas can help hobbyists narrow their focus and find inspiration for their next spring project.
Focus on Spring Holiday's and Events
Use a variety of spring colours to enhance an album celebrating spring activities. Soft pastels, floral colours and brighter hues of green work well to create an atmosphere of new growth in any spring layout. Some ideas for great spring holiday layouts can include,
- Family picnics or similar outdoor gatherings.
- Easter, St. Patrick's Day and Spring Solstice celebrations.
- Playgrounds, parks or farmers market themes.
- Activities such as fishing or hiking.
- Spring break themes.
Start a Nature Album
Nature albums lend themselves well to the use of spring colours and themes since they focus on the outdoors. A variety of layout themes, such as the following, work well for nature albums.
- Landscapes of mountains, valleys and prairies.
- Water themed layouts such as those that focus on rivers, lakes and streams.
- Outdoor adventures.
- Flower and vegetable gardens.
- Wildlife themes.
Spruce up a nature album by cutting trees, flowers and other living items from the discarded parts of cropped photos and using them as embellishments in place of stickers. These clippings will give a layout a more realistic look than some of the factory produced stickers that are available on the market.
Capture Spring Memories
Create a scrapbook that captures personal or family memories of springtime. A family album could include layouts of family events or reunions that took place during spring. Personal albums might focus on significant events or milestones achieved by that person such as college graduations (which often happen around April) or spring break vacations. A child's album could include easter layouts or collages of spring crafts.
Create a Personal Goal and Accomplishment Scrapbook
Since seasonal transitions tend to represent both endings and beginnings, it is appropriate to choose the onset of a season to start a scrapbook geared towards celebrating past achievements and setting new goals. This type of album may tend to contain more memorabilia than photographs but can still be enhanced with all the different varieties of embellishments that are available for traditional scrapbooks.
Memorabilia commonly included in a personal goal scrapbook could include any of the following;
- Certificates and awards of achievement.
- Pictures from awards events and graduation ceremonies.
- Report cards, personnel evaluations and portfolio critiques.
- Collages to represent ones hopes, goals and dreams.
- Inspirational quotes either handwritten or cut from magazines or newspapers.
- Before and after photographs of projects.
- Weight and exercise charts.
The above ideas can not only be used for new scrapbook albums, but can also be incorporated into existing albums that are not yet complete. Whether the scrapbook album of choice is focused on only one theme per album or is created by using a combination of themes, many scrapbook enthusiasts will find that beginning a new project at this time of year can be inspiring and energizing.
Colleen Boudreau - As a social worker of twelve years, Colleen has worked with individuals and families helping them to develop healthier living skills and ...
