Step Up Your Scrapbooking

I can't say enough good things about this book. It is simplicity at its best. The pages featured by Ms. Caveney are beautiful and inspiring, yet not extraordinarily difficult or requiring a million expensive embellishments. This is a fabulous addition to my scrapbooking library, better than most!!!

I'm a big fan of Lisa's work and this book was outstanding. I love her simple, clean style. In addition to the great scrapbooking tips, you are treated to Lisa's beautiful photography throughout. Her travels make for such interesting pages! I think both the beginner and the advanced scrapper will find much inspiration in this book.

I loved this book, and not only because I prefer a clean, classic style over a cluttered look anyday. The author has an obvious eye for color coordination and combinations that are a step above most scrappers. Her work inspires me to focus on what really matters: content. I am often distracted, even dismayed, by overuse of embellishments in many popular designs these day. It's refreshing to see someone focusing on what's important and doing it well. If you like to scrapbook, but want to skip all the outlandish embellishments, this is the book for you. Again, I absolutely loved it!

I love this book, and look at it a lot to get ideas. I am using bigger pictures now in my pages and I like the effect. I also really like seeing a scrapbooking book by someone without kids. A lot of scrapbooking focuses on kids growing up, so it's nice to see other page topics, particularly travel photos. I liked her photos a lot because they are like ones I take and scrapbook. Not artsy, close-up portrait shots, but everyday travel and event photos, made more interesting by simple scrapbooking pages. This book isn't for every scrapbooker, but if you like simple pages that focus on the pictures and the story behind them, this might be a book for you. It's particularly good for 20-somethings without kids.

Step Up Your Scrapbooking seems to be based on the feature of the same name in the magazine Simple Scrapbooks. I found it a refreshing change from some idea books and magazines that are lovely showcases for products, but not really practical for real life scrapbooking. This one actually seemed to want to inspire you to actually use what you have! (Caveney's story of her early scrapping life as a pennypinching student lent the claim some credence.) Nice examples of simple design using only cardstock and a pen, then one embellishment (yes, patterned paper counts!), two, three, and so on. Includes pages by some of my favorite designers, like Shelly Laming, Allison Kimball, and others. It includes some design tips sections on color, taking great photos, and other topics, which I found useful, as well as "assignments" in each section to spur you to actually create something. It's not exactly a book on scrapping on a budget (for example, some of the cardstock-only and one-embellishment pages leaned toward using extremely large photos - not really the most cost-effective choice), but overall very encouraging for those who like simple and effective design, who are on a budget, or who may want to avoid crowding their pages with too many goodies.