This past weekend my sister Annie came in town to hang out and to tap into my stash of scrapbooking supplies. One of her friends is getting married and a scrapbook is being put together by all of the bride’s friends as a shower gift. Each girl was asked to make 2 pages to put inside the album, and Annie decided to focus her pages on a few high school memories.

Now, Annie is just as creative as the next person, but before Friday, her scrapbooking background consisted of cutting letters and phrases out of magazines like YM and Cosmo…so she felt pretty intimidated when confronted with all the scrapbooking supplies available at the craft store.

To ease her into creating her first official “layout”, I tried to break the process down into steps. First, we looked through her pictures and narrowed it down to the ones she wanted to use, which ended up being 3 photos for each layout. Then, I thought it would be good for her to look through some finished layouts to get a feel for what style she was drawn to, so I pulled out 601 Great Scrapbooking Ideas for her to flip through (can’t get more layouts in one book than that!). I told her to look for three-photo layouts that she liked, which helped her get ideas for how to place the photos on the page. She, like me, favored the simpler designs, and after a few hours Friday night and Saturday morning, we completed two really fun layouts.

I had such a good time getting crafty with my sister and re-introducing her to a hobby that we both loved so much when we were younger. Have you “shared the love” for scrapbooking with anyone recently? Check out our Getting Started section for tips on doing just that...or leave us a comment to share your own ideas!

Eileen