What are Scrapbooking Brads?

At first I would have said that I never would have imagined that someone could have a whole room of scrapbooking items as @latte31 mentioned but now that I have some friends who are the definition of scrapbookers - I understand how possible it is!

From my experience most people are not like @shell4life where they plan out their pages meticulously. Rather they accumulate the goods and then make scrapbooks.

One of my co-workers has a scrapbooking weekend with her girlfriends from college. They have a great time, and it is also nice because they pool together their supplies so that they make great use of all of that accumulation of scrapbooking materials.

I am not sure if she has heard of brads used in scrapbooking, but I will have to tell her about them!

I am new to the game of scrapbooking, the school I work for decided to have us make scrapbooks with with and for our kids. I know that may sound odd, but our school is a public separate school for students with special needs and severe disabilities so we have small classes typically ranging from five to seven students in them.

The idea actually came from our PTA. The parents thought that because a few of our students do not make it to graduation and because most of the students are not able to talk, this would give the parents even more insight into what they do at school.

I am excited to do this for our parents! So it sounds like on a few special pages I should ad a scrapbook brad or two to add a little pizzazz and I think our students would enjoy picking out which brad to use.

My friend got some cool autumn brads for her scrapbook. Some of them are so cute, but others are freaky.

I hate spiders, and when I turned to her page with photos of her kids in Halloween costumes held down by puffy spider brads, I screamed and threw the book. The black bat brads were kind of creepy, too.

The little pumpkin brads were adorable, though. They looked good enough to eat! The falling leaf brads came in several shades, and they were perfect for securing pictures of her family catching leaves. She even fastened one of the leaves they caught with a leaf brad.

Giant flea markets are a great place to shop for scrapbooking brads. You can find brads for every occasion, and they generally are marked way down from their original price.

I found a big bin of brads at the monthly flea market held inside a large building in my city. The packs were organized by theme, and most of them contained about fifty brads. Each pack was only fifty cents.

I stocked up for the entire year at this flea market. This was a deal too good to pass up. I even called my best friend and got her out of bed to come down and take advantage of this offer.

I am meticulous with my scrapbooking, and a plan pages before starting on them. I usually work with one small section at a time, so I buy the brads I need as I go along.

I don’t have a whole lot of extra time, so I go for long periods between shopping for brads. When I do go, I know exactly what I want.

For last Easter, I planned a few pages of family photos and candy wrappers. I then went shopping for brads in the shape of Easter eggs, bunnies, and chicks. I bought only what I needed, and I had the exact number of brads already planned.

I have never done any scrapbooking, and I just assumed everything was held together with glue and tape. Brads sound like a really great idea for this type of project.

I remember the brads that came built into my school folders. Instead of three-ring binders, I would buy these thin paper folders with two inner pockets and a center that stood about an inch off the base. This center housed three built-in brads.

I could open and close the prongs to add sheets to my folder. I loved how easy it was to handle.

However, the brads would break off after being used extensively. I suppose this is not a problem with scrapbooking brads, because people generally keep things in the same location after they have fastened the brads down.

I have a group of friends that try to get together once a month to work on our scrapbooking together.

It is fun to see all their creative ideas and share supplies. One of my friends has a large collection of scrapbooking punches, and these are a lot of fun to use and can completely change the look of page.

I try to stick with certain themes when I am working on a project. This helps me narrow down the choices and not go crazy. Once I started scrapbooking with brads, I noticed it became a little bit more expensive though.

It is hard to resist so many adorable brads. Sometimes if I don't have a particular idea in mind, I will look through the selection of brads to get an idea of which way I want to go.

Once you fall in love with scrapbooking there is no end to the supplies you can buy. I could spend half of my paycheck just on scrapbooking items.

Whenever I go to the craft store I have to stick with the amount I have budgeted to spend or I would be in trouble.

My daughter also loves to scrapbook and this is something we enjoy doing together. She loves cats and we found some adorable kitten brads for scrapbooking in the clearance aisle that she had to have.

It can be overwhelming when you are trying to pick out all the different embellishments, so I just buy a few things at a time and slowly build up my supplies.

Even trying to sort through all the different choices of brads can take awhile. I also watch for sales and once in awhile have come across a garage sale where they are selling some of their scrapbook supplies. This is when I feel like I have hit the jackpot!

@Latte31- Normally when I buy scrapbook brads I usually buy a large multipack that offers a variety of colors. It took me a while to get into scrapbooking because I was overwhelmed with all of the choices.

Luckily the sales clerk at the craft store told me to start with a general scrapbook kit and then I could build my collection of supplies from there. She also told me that this craft store offered free classes on scrapbooking which also helps you get comfortable enough to start.

It worked because I started with a small kit and because the amount of supplies that I was working with to start off was manageable enough for me I was able to put my first book together. I am really hooked now.

I really wish I had more time to engage in scrapbooking. I find that making scrapbooking albums is so relaxing. I get lost in time when I put these books together. It is worse when I shop for scrapbooking supplies.

I can spend hours looking at all of the scrapbook stickers and scrapbooking embellishments that are out there. It is really addictive. I have friends that have rooms devoted to scrapbooking in their home. It is really a fun hobby to have.