Episode 48: How to Find Your Scrapbook Style

Welcome to the ScrapHappier Podcast, where we share quick tips, tricks and techniques to help you create scrapbooks you love and be happier while doing it. I’m your host, Alice Boll.

I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. We are going to talk all about style. Now, I’ll be the first to admit. I don’t always have the world’s best style. I have been a fashion victim many times over and I’m perfectly okay with that. Part of my style is knowing that I love to try new things and be adventurous. It turns out that I’m exactly the same way when it comes to scrapbooking. I’m adventurous with my scrapbooking and I love to try new things. If that sounds fun to you, then you might want to check out Episode Number 40. It was called Five Techniques To Freshen Up Your Scrapbook Layouts in 2021.

Oh, before I forget, I should give you a quick reminder. Hit the subscribe button so that you can receive next week’s episode of the podcast automatically.

It’s easy to think about style when we’re thinking about fashion, but our own sense of style expresses in so many different ways. Through our clothing, through our home décor, garden landscaping, or our scrapbooking. Your style allows you to express yourself through your choices and how you bring those choices together. I’ll be the first to admit styles come and go. The trends change. And, you may love them or leave them. But your personal style is all about developing a sense of self rather than jumping on the latest trend. Just like in fashion, in scrapbooking, we see the trends come and go, but we also see them re-appear. Usually, when they come back, they have a little modern twist to them. And, I don’t know about you, but I am not looking forward to the day when we all start wearing our hair all giant like it was in the eighties with those enormous shoulder pads, but I’m kind of scared that it’s coming.

Knowing our personal style allows us to select the best supplies to suit the topics that we want to scrapbook about. It also allows you to match your scrapbooking aesthetic to your own personal style. And, believe it or not, even if you don’t know what your style is, you probably have one. Your style allows you to express your creativity or to be consistent. Knowing what your style is will help you avoid making purchases that are cool but maybe they’re something that you’ll just never use. I think most of us have bought a really cool scrapbook embellishment or a neat paper and then when we’re sitting in our scrapbook room with our photos, we’re like, “I literally don’t know how to use this. When I am ever going to use this supply?” Well, knowing your style can help you prevent that from happening, and then you don’t have to store this weird thing.

So, how do you figure out what your scrapbooking style is or what you’d like your scrapbooking style to be? Let’s talk about that now. Let’s start by looking at your own scrapbook pages. What pages have you made that make you the happiest? When you look at those pages, why do you love them so much? Is it the colors that you used? The style of embellishments that you’ve used? Did you use a certain design? Maybe you just had really great photos. Something about those pages speak to you and I’d like you to look at several pages that you actually like of your own. Look for the similarities between the layouts. What common traits do they share?

By examining your own layouts first, you’re going to have a good idea of the things that you already are good at and that make you happy when you do them. And, here’s the catch. If you look at your layouts and you’re like, “Alice, I don’t like any of these. I just don’t think it’s very good,” well, that tells you something, too, and then, you’re going to like this next tip. The second step in determining your style is to find scrapbook inspiration. What styles are you drawn to? Is there a certain brand or a designer or a certain composition style that you really like? If you absolutely love Paige Evans’ style and you look at her pages and they just make your heart go pitty pat, then that gives you a good direction to head in when you’re creating your own layouts. It doesn’t matter if that’s not your personal style yet, if you’re not actually making pages that look like that yet, because that can be the direction that you head in. It’s not necessarily where you are right now.

Your next step of determining your style is to create a scrapbook mood board. If you have Pinterest, you’ve likely already done this. But what do you pin to your board? What styles would you like to copy? What makes you really excited when you see the certain types of pages? By creating a mood board, it lets you see commonalities between all of the different pages that you’ve pinned. Maybe you love layouts that have white backgrounds. Maybe you love lots of pattern and lots of texture. Maybe you really love simple pages that get to the point. Your mood board will allow you, at a glance, to see what kinds of styles you really enjoy.

The fourth step in determining your scrapbooking style is to build a kit. If this was fashion, you’d be putting together a capsule wardrobe. But for scrapbooking, it’s all about putting together a kit. Which essentials need to go into your kit so that you can make beautiful scrapbook pages in the style that you love? Do you need to add papers that have different textures to them? Do you need to add really chunky embellishments? Do you like to have ribbon on your pages? Are you going to add doilies? Do you like papers that are geometric or do you like florals? If you analyze the essentials that you want to put together to create a scrapbooking kit, that gives you a really good idea of the things that are essential for putting together a scrapbook page.

And, for the final step of determining your scrapbooking style, you need to experiment with unique style choices. It’s okay to say, “Hey, these are the things that are my essentials that make up my style, but I’m not just one thing and it’s okay to play with other unique and interesting things that come along to kind of see if that fits in with your style and if you like it.”

Once you’ve examined what your style is, you can look for supplies that fit within those categories so that when you’re shopping through your own scrapbooking stash, you have things that really fulfill your needs and fulfill your design style. Let’s compare this to fashion styles because I think it will make this abundantly clear and really easy to understand. Let’s picture a bohemian style. Bohemian style clothing draws its inspiration from the sixties and seventies. It’s kind of like that hippie aesthetic, drawing inspiration from the festival culture and things like Woodstock. In a bohemian style, you have lots of earth tones and natural fabrics. You’d see flowing maxi dresses, long skirts, bell bottom pants, large brimmed hats, some fringe, suede, slouchy handbags. We can all picture that, right?

Now, think about how you’d represent bohemian style on a scrapbook page. You’d find earth tone, natural colored papers. You’d look for patterns that have a kaleidoscope style or paisley or swirls. You might try to add some embroidery detail or a little bit of fringe or wood accents. Maybe you’d add some lace or some crochet. Let’s compare this to a kawaii style. Now, kawaii is the Japanese word that means cute and it’s used in a Japanese street style called kawaii. It’s very over the top. It’s almost cartoonish. It’s feminine. It’s like Hello Kitty meets pastel and bows, teddy bears and backpacks. And, if you’re fond of this style, it translates perfectly to our scrapbooking collections when you look at companies like Doodlebug, Bella Boulevard and Lawn Fawn.

Perhaps you’re a fan of the grunge style inspired by grunge music of the eighties and nineties, especially bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Fans of grunge fashion would find things in thrift stores, like plaid flannel shirts, oversized knits, feminine dresses, but styled in a really subversive, disheveled kind of way. They’d throw on some ripped jeans or some tights, have unkept hairstyles and put on those great big black boots, Doc Martens. Now, if you’re a fan of that, how can you translate that to your scrapbooking style? You’re going to want to use things maybe not as they’re intended. You’re going to take something old and you’re going to try using it in a totally different way. You’re going to mess up your paper, crinkle things up, maybe tear things a little bit more, add a little bit of ink for some distressing. And, good news. There are a lot of different companies that cater to this style of scrapbooking. You can look to Graphic 45, Stamperia, Authentique, and even Tim Holtz.

Maybe you’re more of a fan of feminine or romantic styles. Then, you’re going to be looking for different things that have those different types of characteristics. The color pink might be kind of important to you, and flounces or ruffles, bows, lace, light colors. You can look for beautiful papers from companies like Prima. Heidi Swapp has a very romantic feel to her collections. Or, maybe Maggie Holmes or 49th and Market or P13. There are so many good options when you’re looking for a feminine or floral, romantic style.

Maybe you prefer more of a preppy style. It’s kind of that style inspired by those East Coast prep schools and Ivy League colleges, with polo and sailing, tennis, horseback riding. You know the kinds of clothes. Those polo shirts, argyle sweaters, blazers and pencil skirts. Those same kinds of things end up in our scrapbook collections as well, so we end up having some argyle pattern, especially when we’re looking at fall collections. We have nautical collections with lots of navy and white.

Or, perhaps you’re a little bit more classic, polished for the every day. Well, the good news is if you like your classics, those will always be in style. Just like Jackie O and her adorable dresses and jackets, that is never going out of fashion. We can look for classic collections from Echo Park, Photo Play and Simple Stories, because they’ll always have something for us. And, if you like a little more modern edge to it, check out Pinkfresh Studio. They kind of have a modern twist on many of those classics.

Now, you might be thinking, “Alice, I don’t want to have all my pages have a grunge style or a bohemian style or any other specific style.” And, that’s totally okay. And, don’t expect that your scrapbooking style is necessarily going to match your fashion style. Perhaps your personal style kind of goes to the sporty athleisure style wear, but your scrapbooking style is a little more artsy, like Vicki Boutin and Ella and Viv. That’s all okay. The goal about knowing about your style and thinking about your style is just to help you get into your scrapbooking groove so that you can make scrapbook pages that you love.

So, now it’s your turn. Think about your scrapbooking aesthetic. What are the styles that you love? Go through the steps and determine your scrapbooking style. Look at your own scrapbook pages and figure out what pages make you the happiest. Find some scrapbook inspiration. What style are you drawn to? Create a scrapbooking mood board. What styles are you always pinning? Maybe those are something that you’d like to create. Build yourself a scrapbooking kit, kind of like your own scrapbooking capsule wardrobe. Then, once you have it all figured out, go ahead and experiment with some unique style choices. Play with those fun papers that look great on the shelf and get those into your scrapbooks. You might be surprised at where they’ll take you.

I hope that our chat today will help you explore your own scrappy style. If you do, I’d love to know what it is. Please feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to know what your scrappy style is. If you go to the show notes page, there’s actually a way that you can leave me a message right there and let me know. I’d also love to know if your scrapbooking style matches your fashion style. I hope that today’s episode will leave you inspired to make some scrapbook pages that you love in the style that you love, too. Until next time, happy scrapping.

When I go into a clothing store, which I haven’t had the chance to do for a while, but when I do, it seems like I’m always drawn to the craziest, wildest, most outlandish prints. And, it turns out I scrapbook with exactly the same things. The bold ones are always my favorite.