How To Crop And Mat Your Scrapbook Photos

You've picked out some photos that you want to add to your latest scrapbook but you're not too sure what to do to them to make them look great.

Some photos can be quite bland and others can contain too much activity. Two simple ways to help improve photos like these is to crop or matt them. Now don't get scared, these techniques are very straight forward and easy to do. But, you will need some tools.

Cropping basically means to chop off or cut out any unwanted areas of a photo. You can sometimes make a photo more dramatic if you chop out any background and focus on the main subject or object of the photo.

Let's say you have a photo of your child's last birthday party. All of the children are sitting at a table with the birthday cake in front of the birthday child. Photos like these can be busy, with lots of color and action going on in the background. If you were to chop off a little of all four sides, making sure the birthday child was in the middle of the shot, the overall focus would be on the child and not on everything else that was going on in the background. This can greatly improve the impact of the photo.

You can also get very creative with cropping by trying different shapes and cut styles. Ovals and stars are very popular, along with wavy or serrated cut edges. Many different types of cutting boards and blades are available at craft stores.

Matting a photo simply means adding a border or block of color around the outside of the photo. It is usually thin cardboard or colored paper cut to an appropriate size so that it is slightly larger than the photo that will be mounted onto it. Choosing a complementary color to the photo can greatly enhance the overall effect of the photo. If you want a particular color to stand out more in the photo, simply buy some matting board in the same color. The same colored matting board can really make a color pop out of a photo.

Hundreds of different types of matting boards and papers can be found in craft stores, department stores and stationery stores. If you check around your house, especially in your children's bedrooms or study areas, you'll probably find heaps of other things you could also use for matting. If you really think outside the square newspaper print, magazines, and old birthday cards could make great matting boards.

Be bold and be creative. A little cropping and a little matting can really make your scrapbooking photos come to life.

by: Kristy Taylor

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