I do get fed up every time I read “the first thing you need to do as a beginner to scrapbooking is buy an album, a few papers and some adhesive”!

That makes me cross because you DON’T need to buy an album, if you are just trying scrapbooking out as a hobby. It’s a wasted expense if you decide you don’t like it for a start, but I put beginners off buying an album until they have made a few pages and can decide in what size they prefer to work.

It IS possible for beginners to achieve lovely results with only paper, adhesive, scissors and a simple design.

If you want to work in 12×12″ size layouts, then it’s pretty obvious what size album to buy, but I always start off my beginners with 8×8 scrapbooking pages because they are quicker and easier.

Of course, if you buy a 12×12″ album you  will be able to fit any size layout up to 12″ inside it’s sleeves, so if you HAVE to buy one right now, buy a 12×12 one.

But I would actually recommend that you just try out a few pages first, get a feel for things and more importantly haing your layouts up, go on be a devil and display them.  I have my layouts on a large pinboard in my office/craft room (with small bulldog clips holding them (I haven’t stuck pins through my scrapbook pages! ) and each time I make a new layout I take down an older one and replace it with the new one.

I have also framed some of my layouts and I have 3 hanging on the living room wall with another 2 layouts hanging from ribbon and bulldog clips underneath each one, making a display of 9 layouts.

So even if you are a beginner, display your creations, admire them and let it motivate you to make more.  Most of all, you DON’T need to spend a fortune on albums, and embellishments, just make some simple layouts with paper.

Here are some links of examples of pages and mini albums where I have done just that…

Easy Mini Albums (with video tours) Part One, Part Two and Part Three

Layouts Using Paper only found on these posts  This is Me, Is Simple what you want

For $4 you can download a printable (and therefore RE-printable!) scrapbook kit which I have designed especially for beginners.  The picture above shows a simple layout made using the kit contents.