"Decorating Scrapbooks"

I have been a collector of decorating magazines for many years and was starting to become overwhelmed with my piles and piles of magazines and didn’t know what to do with them anymore as they were taking up so much space. I didn’t want to throw them away as I love to go back and browse through them to enjoy my favorite parts of the magazines which featured photos of beautifully decorated rooms and home décor items.

Then, one day several years ago, as I was wondering through an antique store, I stopped in a booth of a dealer that had an item displayed that gave me a very creative idea of what I could do to reduce my piles of magazines and yet allow me to keep the best parts of each of them.

What she had done was taken just a standard white three ring binder notebook and added sheet protectors in which she had placed pages from magazines that showed off some of the same style of items she displayed in her booth. A light bulb when off in my head, and I couldn’t wait to get home and create what I now refer to as my “decorating scrapbooks”.

I started my new hobby by going to an office supply store and purchasing several three inch, three ring white binder notebooks (the sort that have the clear sheet protectors on the outside front and back covers and on the spines of the binders), clear heavy duty sheet protectors and a large pack of just some basic cream colored heavy weight printer/cardstock paper.

Then it was off to the Archivers scrapbook store, where I purchased a variety of pretty 14x14 inch scrapbook papers to decorate my new “scrapbooks” with. I also purchased a pack of 8 x 11 mixed color cardstock paper for another idea I had. I chose the pack that had my favorite pastel colors of pink, soft green, cream and yellow.

Once I returned home, it was time to get to work. I chose matching scrapbook papers for each binder and cut them down to size so that the paper would slide into the outside front and back covers. This meant cutting the paper size down to approximately 10 ¾ inches wide and 11 1/8 inches in height. A standard scrapbook paper cutter works great for this, especially if you are like me and can’t cut in a strait line. After decorating each notebook binder with the pretty scrapbook papers, I added the sheet protectors to each of the binders and inserted one sheet of the cream colored printer/card stock paper into each sheet protector. Adding the card stock paper made the scrapbook pages sturdier and gave the sheet protectors a front and back side.

When this part of the project was completed, it was time to tackle may stacks and stacks of decorating magazines and get artistic and creative. While some of you may cringe over the idea of tearing up some of your favorite old magazines, I had no such problem. Over the next several weeks, as time allowed, I went through each magazine carefully tearing out pages with the beautifully decorated rooms and accompanying articles that I wanted to keep and I even kept pages that just may have had only one or two larger printed words that fit in with my decorating style. Some of the pages held only one or two small pictures of different items that I wanted to save and I kept those also. I wasn’t interested in keeping magazine pages with articles or photos that held no interest for me or in all of the advertisement pages so those pages ended up in the trash pile.

After doing all the tearing out of pages, I neatly trimmed the edges on the full size pages and accompanying articles that I wanted to keep and then it was on to the more detailed work of cutting out and trimming the smaller size photos and cutting out the pictures of the smaller single objects as well as the words or phrases that I wanted to save and use to embellish my scrapbooks with. It was a time consuming process but one that I found very relaxing and enjoyable.

Then the fun part started. I began putting together the scrapbook pages.

I should note that this was not all done at once or even in a short period of time. It took me several weeks to complete the initial phase of putting together my new decorating scrapbooks and it has been an ongoing project ever since as I continue acquiring new magazines each month.

Starting with the full size magazine pages that I was keeping first, I began filling each sheet protector with the pictures and accompanying articles. I also added some of my favorite magazine photos to the covers of the notebook binder to make it look more like a book, instead of just a notebook with a scrapbook paper cover.

Once I had all of the full size pages placed in the sheet protectors, I started on the second phase of putting together the new scrapbook pages. This involved sorting all of the smaller photos, cut-outs, words and phrases into the color categories that they best fit in (pinks, reds, greens, blues, purple, etc.). This would make it easier to create scrapbook theme pages by keeping the photos of a similar color scheme on each individual page or blending different colors together in an eye pleasing way. I recently found some great thin plastic storage cases at Target in the office supply/scrapbook aisles that work great for keeping my color categories separated.

Then, using the different 8 x 11 colored cardstock papers as a background, I began choosing different photos, cut-outs, words and phrases and designing a layout for each page. Once I was satisfied with the design layout and look of the page, I used small pieces of double sided tape to tape the items to the colored cardstock paper. Filling a page was not always easy as sometimes the pictures just didn’t look right together, the colors were off or I didn’t have enough smaller pictures of the kind I was looking for to complete the layout. For these, I would keep the part I had already designed and set it aside to be added to at a later time. Once I had a filled page, both front and back, I put it into the notebook binder.

Here a few random pictures of some of my decorating scrapbook pages.........

I still continue to work on my decorating scrapbooks to this day and I have approximately 15 of them filled already. I store them in the bottom cupboards of my entertaiment center in my living room.

While that may seem like a lot, they take up much less space than all of the piles of magazine I had previously and would have accumulated over the long period of time since I started this hobby of mine. Working on these scrapbooks has become one of my favorite hobbies and I often spend hours at a time designing my page layouts using new magazine photos, cut-outs, words and phrases as I collect them. It will be an ongoing hobby as long as I continue to acquire new decorating magazines each month.

Now when I want to enjoy all of the old magazine photos and articles, all I need to do is pull out my scrapbooks and look through them and see only the “best of the best” of the decorating style that I love and I don’t have to look at any of the unappealing photos, articles or advertisements that often fill a magazine. Now all that I see are pictures that appeal to my senses and make me happy.

I hope that by me sharing this with you that I may have sparked an idea in your head and that you may find something similar to do with old magazines that you have been holding on to for years and years.