If you're a serious scrapper, chances are you've visited at least one scrapbooking message board in your lifetime.  You may even have one or two favorites that you enjoy looking up on a regular basis.  If you're considering sharing or joining in any of these scrapbooking message boards, we have some tips you should keep in mind as to the right way and the wrong way to participate.

Respect Others' Work

Remember that when you see examples of other scrapper's work on those scrapbooking message boards, you need to respect the work they've done by not copying them completely.  You can of course be inspired by their work and try copy their color combinations, lettering styles, use of embellishments, or other such elements of their pages, but their work is their work.  You certainly wouldn't want someone copying your original ideas for their scrapbooks, so don't copy theirs!  Respect those who are posting examples of their scrapbooks and don't use them as your own.  They don't put pictures of their work on those scrapbooking message boards so that others can just steal them!

Share Your Own

There's probably nothing worse than those who go on scrapbooking message boards only to take from others and not to share their own examples and tricks of the trade.  If you're just starting out, of course you should feel free to ask questions and to just browse around for other people's examples, but you should also contribute something as well.  If you visit scrapbooking message boards time and again without ever sharing something, you're like a scrapbooking pirate!  You want to share something with everyone else rather than simply taking things for yourself.  Even if it's just an example of a lettering style or a new online site that you've found for neat supplies, definitely post something, sometime.

Be Prepared to Browse

You can spend literally hundreds of hours on these scrapbooking message boards and never see everything that's on those boards!  From examples of wedding scrapbooks to sites that sell supplies for scrapbooking, there is really no end to the amount of things you can browse.  So, be prepared!  Set aside some time to really look over what's offered on these boards; don't just pop in and pop out.  If you do really look at what other scrappers have to offer, you might your inspiration right in front of you!