Even though I finished school years ago, I still get excited by September’s advertising push for back to school supplies. There was just something special about getting a new box of Crayola pencil crayons to start off your school year.

One thing I always loved as a kid was gel pens. Though not exactly practical, gel pens made homework a little more exciting. They can make your scrapbook pages a little more exciting too.

Multi-coloured letter stickers can look great standing alone, but against a busy background, they might lose their pop. My poor yellow “e” nearly disappeared against the pale green background. Try tracing the edges of your stickers with gel pens right on the patterned paper to add some definition to your page layout. In this example, I used a pale blue gel pen. You can use a darker colour against pale letters to instantly add definition.