Easy Scrapbooking: Borders and Highlights from Scraps

Maybe you were already aware of the endless possibilities provided for scrapbooking and faith-booking using nothing but paper and fabric/notion scraps, or maybe not. New bordering ideas will flow using these helpful tips to use up your scraps, along with creative photo-layout suggestions from Better Homes & Gardens' online ScrapbooksEtc.com.

Sewing Box Odds & Ends

A combination of different borders, using up scraps from prior sewing projects, will create a feminine border of ribbons, bows and lace for photos of your daughter or granddaughter. Enhance scrapbook pages with appliqué techniques, as in this flower-garden baby-announcement page, or uniquely bordering photos using fabric trimmings and old tape-measurer, plus use snaps, hooks and doilies.

Hand stitching sculpted fabric pieces can be positioned and glued down for a custom appliqué quilt-look or striped-quilt background photo page layout. And try using up all those stray buttons for fun button-embellished accents, button highlights, and flowery button borders.

Custom Stripes & Paper Punches

With paper-trimming scraps from other projects, glue down around photos for framing, including decorative paper punches to create repeating patterns. Bring a double-page spread together mixing colorful-print paper-trim scraps, or by using matching border trims (cut from the same sheet) to become elongated, or double-wide borders for full wedding-page spreads.

Trimming Colorful Paper Scraps

Cut colorful leftover paper scraps and turn them into wonderfully fun objects, creating jumbo borders, such as birthday cupcakes, lettering, or modern wavy-lines, as well as heart designs. Also use up printed block scraps in decorative patchwork placements along with photo borders.

Rubber Stamps & Stickers

Borders can be created on your scrapbook pages using multiple sticker arrangements such as varying heart-shaped stickers, all-over dotted-sticker borders, or by combining several different sticker themes. Rubber stamped designs can be artistically colored, cut out and pasted into place, creating an over-sized flower border, or filled in with paper-scrap squares for an interesting mosaic-tile leaf border.

Although you may already be incorporating borders onto your photo scrapbooking pages you should try these techniques to use up scraps from your earlier projects. Each bordering idea offers new ways to express your creativity while uniquely archiving precious family photos.