Customer Reviews

Real.Life.Scrapbooking.

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Whether you're a new scrapper or a long-time devotee, this book should be on your bookshelf. Rebecca Cooper goes through several elements of scrapbooking, from what to cover, why to document the little things, and how to create eye-catching, simple pages.

Not only are the examples included amazing in their gorgeous simplicity, the journaling she includes on her pages brought me to tears more than once. I appreciate how she covers the good times as well as the not-so-good aspects of family life and parenting.

This book will go on my list of must-haves while I'm scrapping, both for the motivation and inspiration, as well as for the examples it provides.

I really love this book. As a stay-at-home, I don't have a lot of time or money to spend on my hobby. But I do love scrapbooking and so I make the time to do what I love. Reading this book I really felt like the author feels very much the way I do. A lot of scrapbooking idea books are filled with layouts that are very time consuming and expensive to make. And while that is fun sometimes, it's just simply not always an option. Rebecca's book will help remind you of why you started scrapbooking in the first place. It will help you make the most of your time and supplies by keeping you focused on the real goal of scrapbooking: creating layouts that convey your message about your life for those you love the most.

I enjoyed this book but found myself bored about half way through. I took a step back and tried to see why I felt that way. I realized her layouts contained too many posed photos. As much as I love posed portraits, I find beautiful candids much more exciting. I found that the perfect smiling faces got boring and repetitive. I like her style, but I found I also got got bored with it half-way through. I have seen this same idea and style out in the industry a lot. It seems more appropriate for a series of magazine articles rather than a book on its own. If you don't already subscribe to one or more scrapbook magazines, then you will probably get a lot out of this book, but if you have a shelf-ful of magazines and idea books, I would pass. Or buy it with a 50% off coupon or wait for a really good sale if you HAVE to have it.

I had been looking forward to reading this book. (finally got it as a christmas gift).
Plus:
the quality of the book: great paper, very nicely put together, nice size.
I do like the simple style of her scrapbooking, mainly paper and photos with very few embellishment. Very similar to all the layouts you'll see in simple scrapbook magazine.
Very good photos on the scrapbook pages.
Very good journaling on the scrapbook pages. It was more entertaining to read the journaling than the actual text of the book.
If you really have no idea what to scrapbook about, you can get some nice ideas but I think most of us know what we want to scrapbook about just want to get more ideas on how to do it.

Minus:
* It is repetitive. After all, it is her style being featured and all of the Layouts are very very similar
* What bothered me the most, is that I didn't really learn a lot. The entire text on the first chapter (out of only 4 chapters) was the author, describing what she scrapbooked about on that page (which you can tell by looking at the page and reading the journaling)
* The only real tool is in the last chapter, with the use of sketches, but that is nothing new either.

Overall a good book but not a great one.

This book is my TOP pick for scrapbooking.
Rebecca's classic style and organized approach are fabulous.
Her senior editor wrote in her introduction, "Curl up, put some music on and settle in with this book"... that's exactly what I would advise anyone reading this to do.
It will be time well spent if you are interested in scrapbooking!

While I really did enjoy reading this book and looking at the layouts it wasn't really anything new. If you have books or magazines from the Simple Scrapbook team then this book will just reinforce the idea of the simple layouts of everyday life and little moments.
There were some nice ideas for layouts and journaling that I would use. I think that this book has lots of good ideas for someone with small children.
I recommend it, but wait for a good sale or put it on your wish list.

I love this book. It is creative with simple ideas for stylish and "peaceful" pages. By peaceful I mean that the layout is clean and the photos is in focus. A lot of us don't have the time to make artistic pages and we don't have endless amount of supplies. When you read/flip through this book you'll think: I can do this. Well done Rebecca Cooper!

A lot of ideas,tips,layouts,and sketches to inspire your own creativity.After seeing this product in a bookstore,I knew I wanted to own it.Not wanting to pay the retail price I found it on Amazon.

Real.Life.Scrapbooking.

When I first got this book I loved it and got a few ideas for layouts from it, but as time has passed, and I've had a chance to actually read the whole thing, I find that it is quite repetitive in both content and style. Despite this drawback, provided you are looking for a design idea book (as opposed to a techniques book) AND you like blocking-style, minimalist pages, this is actually a pretty good book, particularly if you are looking for ideas around journaling and "what to scrap."

Firstly, this book focuses almost entirely on the blocking style of scrapbooking. While most of my layouts are very simplistic and use colour blocking, even I grew tired of the same look and started looking for pages with a bit more pizzazz. Also, as another reviewer mentioned, most of the photos in the layouts are professional photos that leaves me as a reader wondering how my own cluttered snapshots would look in these minimalist pages.

Where this book really shines is in its discussion of journaling ideas. The author does an excellent job of describing and demonstrating the importance of scrapping the everyday things, which is quite appealing to me. I think it's fine to document the family holiday and birthday parties, but what I really want to remember when I look through my scrapbooks is what my day-to-day life was like at that point in time.

There is a lovely little section in the How chapter called "Making it Last" which shows you how to get the most out of your coordinated supplies. It features 5 different collections of supplies, and using fold-out pages, shows you how to get additional layouts, cards, and other projects out of the leftovers. I was surprised how different the looks were considering the same supplies were used. There are also some pretty good (mostly single-page) sketches at the end of the How chapter and throughout the final chapter as well.

I can't not mention that this book is spiral bound. I'm still trying to figure out why a scrapbooking book would be bound any other way, but unfortunately, I haven't found many with this small but incredibly useful feature.

Bottom line: if you like highly embellished flashy layouts or instructions on techniques, this probably isn't the book for you. If you like simple block-style layouts or are looking for inspiration to scrapbook everyday events, or boost your journaling skills, this will fit the bill.

I love the simple yet beautiful style of the layouts in this book. I have been weeding out all of my idea books and magazines but this is one that I will definitely be keeping in my "special" collection!