I am an avid scrapbooking. I LOVE it! One thing I see over and over again though, is people over buying supplies in the beginning before setting their own personal "style."
Number one rule to save money is to never buy anything (paper, buttons, ribbon....) unless you know exactly what you are going to use it for. The only exception to this is solid colored paper. Resist the urge to buy ahead before it is gone.
Patterned papers. These are very hard to work into your layout and will often distract from the photos. If you stay with solid colored cards stock it is much cheaper and your photos will "jump" off the page.
For instance if your daughter was a pink princess for Halloween the "typical" Halloween colors of Black and Orange will not "go with" the princess photos. It would be better to do an all pink layout and skip the Halloween patterned papers.
All you really need is a paper cutter, scissors, pencil, ruler, black marker, and adhesive.
Online you can find all kinds of "sketches." These will have no photos, but will give you layout ideas of where to put your photos, how to crop them.... For instance you could cut 10 photos into small 1inch squares and use these squares along the bottom of your pages. They will then "turn into a border," without the use of embellishments.
There are also many titles you can print out and then color them in with colored pencils. Do not buy the fancy expensive markers yet they are hard to work with.
If you have an Archiver's near you, you can use their die-cut machine for free. By layering the die-cuts (for instance putting tires on a plan red die-cut car) it will become really cute.
Then keep all your scraps of paper in baggies or file, by color. That way they are easy to use.
Buy a box of plain white envelopes and make your own cards with scraps. That way you use up all those little bits of ribbon, colored paper.... You can find quotes on the internet to write inside the cards.
I really hopes this helps!
