Review Of The Scrapbooking Embellishment Handbook

As I mentioned a little while back, I recently bought myself a copy of The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook by Sherry Steveson. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I thought I’d give Aussie readers an update on what I thought of the book.

Introduction

Before I start, I should perhaps mention that author Sherry Stevenson has written one previous book called When Life Gives You Lemons. She also maintains a blog at http://sherrysteveson.typepad.com/.

Contributors for the current book include Kimber McGray, Nic Howard, Suzy Plantamura, Jamie Harper, Rita Weiss, Cindy Tobey, Melissa Phillips, Judi VanValkinburg, Stephanie Vetne, Janet Ohlson and Katrina Simeck. These artists have provided numerous sample layouts for Sherry to discuss throughout the book.

Description

The book has a hard cover and is spiral bound, making it easy to flip the pages back and forth. The pages are glossy (magazine style) displaying pictures in beautiful, vibrant colour.

Spiral Binding The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook contains seventeen sections covering many popular embellishments, from acrylic and brads right through to stickers and tags. At the end of the book there’s also a “gallery” showing basic layouts, and then the same layouts with more “wow” factor added to them. It’s a fantastic touch and an excellent way to demonstrate adding details to your layouts, especially for simple scrappers like myself who are a bit “detail challenged”.

Who Does This Suit?

The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook is suited to scrapbookers with a widge range of skills, from novices through to old hands. For beginners, it serves as a scrapbooking “bible” of sorts, a rich resource providing a run down of all the main embellishments that scrapbookers usually dabble with. It’s also a worthwhile reference for intermediate scrappers who might be looking to extend their repertoire of techniques, featuring everything from currently popular items such as digital kits, acrylic, ruffles to almost forgotten items such as eyelets and fibers. Veteran scrappers may also get some value out of the book as a source of inspiration when their scrapping has become stale and they need a new idea for an old staple, or even as a gentle reminder of the myriad of embellishment choices available to use on a project.

Good Points

Some of the ideas in the book are quite innovative, so even if you’ve used a particular embellishment countless times before, you may not have thought of doing some of the things with it that Sherry suggests.
Embellishment ideas progress in difficulty within each section from “Simply Create”, “Kick It Up” to “Think Outside The Box”. Within each section there’s also three mini step-by-step technique tutorials. Techniques are generally no more than four steps, with the majority being only three steps. (The back cover states there are 51 step-by-step techniques in total.)
Each sample layout has a supplies list, indicating the main products used (including brands names where possible) and also a materials list showing tools required.
Scattered throughout the book are brief, handy tips relevant to the embellishments and techniques being discussed on a particular page.

Bad Points

Obviously, it’s difficult for anyone to attempt to cover every single type of embellishment out there. Still, I felt there were a few omissions such as mesh, wire and beads to name but a few.
The gallery section could have been bigger. This section is a fabulous idea which I loved, but unfortunately there’s only six examples in this section. I would have like to have seen more.

Recommendation

Overall, The Scrapbook Embellishment Handbook offers a thorough coverage of scrapbooking embellishments. It has a plethora of innovative ideas, a bird’s eye overview of many interesting techniques and a sprinkling of handy scrapbooking tips.

Well worth the money spent in my opinion. I’m very pleased to have this volume in my scrapbooking library. Thumbs up from me!