by Sunday Lamdin

There is a wealth of scrapbooking layout supplies out there and more being invented every day. But the cost of these things can mount up pretty quickly and so here is a list of tips for making your scrapbooking budget go a lot further.

One -  Although embellishments such as brads are supplied in all sorts of shapes and sizes by the scrapbooking industry, you can buy ordinary brass brads (paper fasteners as they are known) from stationers and discount stores for a fraction of the price. 

Two - Always take a look at clearance bins for things like ribbons and fabric ends.

Three - A good resource is the stockists/showrooms of blind  and curtain manufacturers, they often want to give away their out-of-date books of swatches and these samples are really good as backgrounds for scrapbooking layouts. The picture shows a card made with pieces of blind material.

Four - Then there are the bouquets of silk flowers available at discount stores and garden centres. Just take the heads apart and you have instant blooms as embellishments. And an extra tip is to buy white ones because you can always colour them with your ink pads to the exact colour you want.

Five - I have found various items at charity shops, for instance, costume jewellery which I have used on cards and scrapbooking layouts. I have bought packs of used stamps for next to nothing and found loads of buttons too.   The gold flower on the card above was a pendant found at a charity shop, and it makes for a top quality, yet cheap, embellishment!

Six - Then there are the car boot sales and garage/yard sales. You can discover little items for embellishing scrapbooking layouts, for instance sewing box contents like measuring tapes can be useful. Small metal washers and other little items from the tool boxes are great for “masculine” pages and cards for men and boys.

Seven - Use old clothes, cut out the pockets of jeans (great from kids clothes), cut off buttons, zippers, rivets, tags of material, ribbons, or just a pretty logo from the inside of the garment.  Not only can you make use of your old clothes but you can also buy cheap clothes from your local charity shops.

The card in this picture shows the use of a pocket cut from an old pair of my 4yr old's jeans and a bracelet from a charity shop. TIP: I attached the bracelet with brads, rather than gluing it, so that it could be detached from the card and worn!

One final thing...  you can use your scanner/colour photocopier to copy fabrics such as clothing, for backgrounds. Things that have good textures such as towels are great, and the range of colours for towels is brilliant nowadays too!