I lost my wedding ring for three days. Today I tore the entire house apart looking for said ring and didn't have time to watch any anime. The ring was eventually found and there was rejoicing in the street. Of course it was found after I picked apart the cat liter and nearly had a nervous breakdown at the thought of it being in my cat's stomach but that is besides the point. But sadly no anime was watched and no manga was read.
But there was still a bit of anime in my day. While tearing my house apart I took the time to clean and reorganize stuff that has been piling up since AWA. In between crying over the fact that my cat might have swallowed my ring and moving around every piece of furniture in my house I went through my extras from AWA and AFO and made some scrape booking pages. While my husband doesn't think it counts as cleaning it does in my mind. XD Fun cleaning that gets the stuff off the table and somewhere more product.
So enjoy my special pictures of my beautiful scrapbook pages!
Since I have started scrapbooking I have gotten into the habit of picking up stuff that seems useless to the average person but to me it can become something. Or maybe I am naturally a pack rat and now I can actually use stuff in useful ways.
But when it comes to scrapbooking anime you have to make your own special embellishments. There are no racks of cute anime girls in the Joelle section. They have baby's first tooth and Girl Scout but the closest thing they have to paper is Hello Kitty. So if you want to scrapbook anime conventions everything is do it yourself. XD
Pick up everything that is free. You may be able to use it later.
Making your own paper is really easy. What I do is use a hard stock piece of paper to glue anime related stuff to. I use paper that came in a stack that I am not particular fond of instead of buying new paper. I use harder paper as you are gluing more stuff than usually to the paper and it needs to hold up. Also some of the freebies at conventions are made of thicker and heavier paper so the background paper needs to hold up.
Also get two convention guides: One to cut up and one to keep as a souvenir.
The biggest freebie that you need is your convention guide. Usually the cover has a cute picture on the front as well as the name of the event you are attending. I usually don't have a problem with getting multiple copies of convention guides as I attend conventions with my husband. One can usually get a leftover convention guide on Sunday (or the last day of the convention). But I wait until Sunday because I don't want to take a guide when someone really needs one for its actual purpose.
Ransack promotional booths!
Another great source of freebies are promotional and industry booths. These booths usually bring tons of postcard or bookmark sized pictures of up and coming animes that are free to everyone! I know most people go for the posters but these little babies are what I am looking for. Sure you might feel like a greedy pig walking up to a table and taking every single piece of paper on the table...but I tell myself that at least these papers will be put to good use unlike the majority of them that will end up in the garbage can.
Event schedules are very useful...to cut up and use as background!
You might be looking at my pages and wondering why I would create pages full of pretty pages that are going to be covered up by my own personal pictures. While that does happen I try to position the pictures in a way that I can cover up the background and still maintain the cuteness of the freebies that I used to make the page.
Sometimes I pick things that will be good background but I know I will cover up the majority of that section and it won't hide any cuteness. Case in point event schedules. Nothing cute is covered and what is leftover after the picture is put in placed will still be relevant and show convention related stuff. Also it is good to have some section of the page not covered in anime so it doesn't take away from my personal pictures.
Use club promotions and business cards.
At most conventions there will be a table or section where clubs and other conventions will promote their specific event. Again these are freebies that people want you to take. I never go overboard and take 46907 of any one item. I usually take one of each if I see potential cuteness in the freebie. Also business cards make great space fillers when working with odd shaped promotional stuff. Most dealers are happy to hand you over a business card or slip one in your bag when you make a purchase anyway.
Using the "trash" from your purchases.
I tend to keep a lot of useless junk if it has something even remotely cute on it. So usually when you buy a Japanese plushie it comes with a super cute tag on it. Instead of tossing out that useless piece of paper you can use it as scrapbooking material! When I bought my Lego people they usually came with a tiny piece of paper that had more Lego people on it. So instead of throwing away cuteness you can use it to enhance you page, especially if you plan on scrapbooking your swag anyway. Use what you have people!
Sometimes the Artist Alley can help with your scrapbooking.
The Artist Alley is a great place to pick up stickers that you can use once you place your personal pictures on the page. I don't typically use other people's art as background on pages but at AWA I found stuff that would be perfect for scrapbooking. This artist had a tiny bucket of random Sailor Moon pictures but they were too tiny to frame or otherwise display in a room. But before I walked away I released that they would make cute accent pieces for scrapbooking. So while I don't think one should go in the Art Alley with the sole purpose of cutting and possibly covering up someone's work you have to look out for potential treasures that you can use in a respectful way.
Tenchi does not promote the cutting up of manga!...Normally.
Yes I cut up manga. It felt really weird to do so. I am sorry Card Captor Sakura and CLAMP. But this manga was accidentally purchased when I already owned that particular volume. It is an older manga and in the middle of the series so I would have little success in selling that manga anyway. But CCS is so super cute and makes such cute background paper. I tried to position all the cuteness towards the edges so they wouldn't be covered up. Again do not go out and buy lovely manga with the sole purpose of cutting it up. But use what you have or if it is a great deal. XD
So all and all these pages cost about 3 dollars to make. I have tons of manga pages left and I used minimum amounts of glue. I know some people spend tons of money on the extras and backgrounds of scrapbooking but I don't have tons of extra monies to be spending on expensive stickers (that don't exist). I am busy spending that cash on anime merchandise!
So here is how you can scrapbook you anime conventions with spending little to no money. I am not sure how many anime fans out there scrapbook but here is how I do it. Personally if I was a cosplayer or attended tons of anime conventions a year I would want to document my adventures in a creative way. Here is a way to do so and make it anime related at the same time. Hope you enjoyed my pictures and tips. XD
No comments:
Post a Comment