How to Form a Border in Scrapbooking

Borders are among the most basic of scrapbooking tools. In fact, making borders is among the first skills most scrapbookers learn. If you are just starting out in scrapbooking, you should learn how to form a border.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Scrapbooking page
• Black acid-free scrapbooking pen
• Felt tipped pens in a variety of colors
• Ruler
• Template
• Border sticker
• Archival safe tape
• Magazines
• Additional stickers

Form a Border for Your Scrapbook

1. Draw your own. The most basic type of border is one that you create yourself. Using a felt-tipped pen or marker, simply draw the design of your choosing around one or more edges of a scrapbook page.
2. Use a black scrapbooking pen to create an outline of an image that can be colored in for your border, or just create a colored picture without black lines. Use a ruler if you need help making straight lines.
3. Use a template. You can buy border templates in crafts stores or online (these can be printed directly to your computer). Use a black scrapbooking pen to trace the borders from these templates directly onto your scrapbook page.
4. Cut out a design and attach it to the edges of your scrapbook page using archival safe tape. You can print out scrapbook border designs you have downloaded from the Internet. Lexmark has a few to get you started (see Resources below).
5. Use your imagination by cutting out pictures from magazines. You can find border inspiration anywhere. Any time you see pictures in a magazine you think would make a good border, cut them out.
6. Add stickers for embellishment. Scrapbook stickers can be used to add color and detail to your borders. These can be stuck right onto the page wherever you want them.
7. Try a sticker. Some scrapbook borders come as pre-printed stickers and can be stuck directly to the scrapbook page.
8. Affix pictures or die cuts directly to your scrapbook with archival safe tape as parts of your borders. You can also use pictures as templates for creating identical pictures you can later trace onto your scrapbook (or you can cut out all of the copies and stick them to the scrapbook with tape).

Tips & Warnings

• Remember, when you form a scrapbook border, it does not have to go around all the edges of the page. Be creative with your border placement to vary the look of your pages.
• Use acid-free pens to draw your borders. Doing this will protect the structural integrity of the paper and make the page last longer.