Welcome to my world of the practical scrapbooker

Here is ten years of scrapbooking my photos and memorabilia onto actual paper .....without major art projects or (too) complicated techniques.

I blend traditional paper and "new" digital techniques to tell the stories of my family's fun, travels, and history.

Here are my thoughts as I sort, shop, crop, organize, arrange, journal, and decorate my scrapbook pages.

1/05/2009

Captions for historical documents

Some official documents that are important to tell the story in a scrapbook are a whole page and are not exactly exciting or self-explanatory, posing challenges for embellishments, titles, and text. Obviously, I always recommend using copies. The copies need to stay in one piece to look official and vintage. It is hard to attach comments or explanations to the document and not look cramped or not cover up an important part of the document itself.

My solution is to put the document in a page protector, then attach its captions and title on top of the page protector. I especially like adhesive "stack mat" card stock for the text boxes, titles, and captions that I place outside the page protectors. The back is entirely "peel and stick" adhesive to keep the items secure.

I especially like using arrows that both point out and explain interesting facts on the document. I the try to create a facing picture page relating to the subject of the document.