Scrapbook Ideas for Upcycling Your Older Products | Page Guide No. 17

Upcycling is a big trend in fashion and home interiors and one of the easiest ways to make a scrapbook product work with any page!

Our Creative Team made pages here that feature an older scrapbooking product given a facelift. They share their tips for altering older products and dressing them up to give them the spotlight.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SIGN UP FOR OUR EMAIL LIST AND GET YOUR FREE PAGE GUIDE

Meggan Blethen says, “My middle son usually loves swimming in the pool and can swim in the deep end. We went to my in-law’s hotel pool, and for some reason Brynnan would not swim in the deep end. His Beach ball made it that way and his grandpa came to the rescue with the pool net.”

“I used an old chipboard alpha here. I loved the playful font and felt it went well with my story. The original color of it was red, but there wasn’t any red on my layout and I just don’t really like red in the first place. And so I painted over the chipboard to get the color I needed and create a stand-out element for its bold color.”

 

Kelly Prang says, “This page is about an end-of-summer trip we took to the beach back in 2012.  My son is a bit of a homebody, and not too fond of traveling, but even he got excited on this day at Orange Beach, AL.”

“I loved the retro look of this doodled crab embellishment from the digital kit I was using. It reminded me of scrapbook supplies from back when I first began scrapbooking in 2000. To update the look, I applied a digital acrylic style to it, then added a “plastic pocket” style.  If I had been using a physical product (instead of digital) to get the same look, I could have put the crab inside of a rumpled/wrinkled plastic page protector and used a fuse tool to seal around the edges of the crab.”

 

Marcia Fortunato says, “This scrapbook page is about my general dislike of spring weather and shows the way I try to cope with it and make the best of my least favorite season.”

“Looking through my older scrapbook supplies, I found that I had a lot of cloud embellishments from a few different companies. The dark clouds, in particular, reminded me of rain, so I knew I could finally use them on my spring layout. By combining several transparent clouds with the wood veneer and kraft clouds and raindrops, I could achieve the stormy feel I was going for and use up some old products in the process.”

“I found that I didn’t actually have to alter the products in any way. I think clouds were trendy a few years ago, and yet they are a universal product that doesn’t necessarily go out of style. By grouping many of them together and then using a current background paper (which reminded me of a cheerier spring rain), I was able to support my story, use up older products, and still maintain a fresh feel to the layout. The little butterflies at the bottom of the layout are also quite old. By, again, grouping them I was able to mimic the colors of the clouds and create a visual triangle while communicating a more positive end to my story.”

 

Ronnie Crowley says, “My page is about our puppy’s love of toys. I loved the picture and knew I had to scrapbook it. I decided to go back to products from one of my favorite digital product designers who is sadly not with us any longer: Pattie Knox. I still regularly use her staples as I haven’t found any that I like as much.”

“I looked at what products I had from Pattie, and decided to use on of her plastic paper clips. The plastic is a little dated now, but that was easy to overcome digitally with the application a digital glitter style. Before I knew it, I had a glitter-covered paper clip! I also took a flower from the older kit by Sara Gleason and applied a style to turn it into a puffy sticker. Digital styles are a great way to update older digital supplies–and a lot less messy than with real paper supplies.”

 

Nicole Mackin says, “This page is about taking my daughter and one of her friends to the new Beauty and the Beast movie. I used old Maya Road and Heidi Swapp clocks to play off of the title, which is based on a song from the movie. To dress up and update them a bit, I backed the clocks with newer patterned paper using patterns that I felt were reminiscent of the movie.”

 

Christy Strickler says “These are my son’s first Easter portraits.”

“I had new supplies featuring rose gold metallic accents, and I inked several older pieces of wood veneer with a rose gold ink to match. Inking the older pieces updated them and made it easier for me to create embellishment clusters with the new die cuts. The larger wood veneer piece with the linked circles was also cracked. The inking combined with a few layered die cuts helped me hide the flaws.”

 

DON’T FORGET TO GRAB YOUR FREE PAGE GUIDE