Holtz Ranger

Scrapbook Ideas For The Bride

If you are scrapbooking your own wedding, you are creating a historical document. Don’t go for a small format like 8 by 8 for something this important. Get yourself some quality scrapbook that is letter size or 12 by 12. Not only will this give you space for the big photographs, you can also include a copy of documents such as your marriage certificate without covering the entire area. Make sure that you copy all the photographs first before you use any of them, and of course you can scan and print your documentation at any convenient size.

When you consider the pages, think about what kind of questions your daughter would pose on the topic of your wedding. How long was the engagement? What did your ring look like? When did you decide to get married? Where did you get your dress? Why did you choose it? How much did you spend? Think of all the details that you want to include. Your wedding photograph album has the official version, you scrapbook can be as honest as you want it to be. You can tell the whole story of how his mother brought you bridesmaids you didn’t want and didn’t know, or how your mother didn’t like the wedding dress, or you can simply ignore anything unpleasant and pretend it didn’t happen.  When it comes to your daughters turn, it may be useful to be able to show her what you went through.

If you are scrapbooking a parent, or grandparents wedding you might want to consider using embellishments that are made to look like they’re old or aged. My parents wedding pictures are black and white, while my grandmothers are sepia. Both of these look a little odd on colorful backgrounds, so I’d suggest creating your own background pages. Find a relatively plain background paper you like and choose two two toning colors of Ranger Distress Inks. Using a mask, such as The Flourish from Tim Holtz, you can create an effect which will be in your chosen colors, but will look printed, and it’s much cheaper than using the ink in your computer printer!

Masks are great for wedding pages and are easy to handle. Just put the mask down on the scrapbook – it is adhesive but completely repositionable. With a toning ink begin to dab around the mask using a sponge or blender. Tim Holtz masks are transparent which means that what you see is what you get.  As you color areas of the page with your distress inks, blending and shading as you go, the area under the mask remains the same. Your background can be as subtle or as striking as you like, depending on the colors you choose. Using a fine water spray you can spread and blend the distress ink colors creating one of the mottled paper designs you see in expensive collections, only this time you are in control and can choose the right colors for your photos and layout.  If you plan to put your photos in the middle, concentrate the ink effects towards the edge. It’s easy to shade top to bottom or right to left, when you are in control of the shading! You can use this technique as often as you like – let the ink dry, move the flourish mask and work with another color, or use a different mask entirely. You can create wonderful effects by using masks and stamps together, create delicate, shaded backgrounds and stamp on top in white or grey ink this time, or leave the mask in place and stamp over that. Touches of gleaming gold can create a luxurious effect, and of course you can always add that touch of transparent glitter!

Weddings are intensely personal, and while there are many beautiful wedding papers, tags, frames and scrapbook embellishments available to buy, nothing is quite the same as creating your own unique pages for your own family wedding.  Once the pictures and other items are added, you not only have a wedding scrapbook, you have a family heirloom, ready to tell your story to generations yet to come.

Tim Holtz/Ranger Haul