Ideas for Scrapbooks
Scrapbooking has become one of the most popular crafting hobbies in the United States. Craft stores dedicate several aisles to the retail products available for scrapbooking. Creating a scrapbook combines sentimentality with art, allowing people to preserve precious memories in artfully creative ways. There are so many ideas for creating scrapbooks that entire books are written on the topic. The following are popular options.
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New Baby
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Welcome a new baby by creating a baby scrapbook. A new version of yesterday's baby books, with fill-in-the blank pages for recording dates of momentous occasions, the scrapbook highlights the time line in a variety of ways. Use photos to chronicle the mother's journey, from just realizing she's pregnant through the birth of the baby. Use mementos from doctor's appointments and the baby shower and shared words of wisdom to enhance photos that have been collected along the way.
Dedicate entire pages to one single event. Events can be as seemingly miniscule as the first day the new baby arrives home. Embellishments are available at craft supply stores to liven up the items you've already collected for inclusion.
A few suggestions for items to stockpile when planning to create a scrapbook honoring a new baby are napkins from the shower, photos from the shower, snapshots taken during the pregnancy and of the new baby, milestones in development and noted at the doctor's office, and tiny items used at the baby's birth. Ask the hospital for an extra diaper. Save the small cap new babies wear right after they're born. These items can all be included in the scrapbook.
Keep in mind that a new baby scrapbook is an ongoing work in progress and may be added to for the first two or three years of the baby's life.
Travels
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Travel scrapbooks are fun to compile and may be made for individual trips or for all the travels you've taken. Knowing you'll create a scrapbook on the topic makes your trip even more fun, as you'll amuse yourself collecting napkins, matchbooks and postcards and taking hundreds of photos for possible inclusion in your scrapbook.
Save ticket stubs, luggage tags, hotel letterhead and photos of unusual scenes. Ask restaurants you visit for a copy of the menu. These are all perfect accoutrements for a travel scrapbook.
Craft stores sell embellishments highlighting a number of destinations, so creating your book should be simple no matter where you've been. Be sure to journal throughout your trip or keep a compact voice recorder handy so you don't forget any details of your adventures and can write down the more significant ones for inclusion in a scrapbook.
History
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Chronicle your family's history or the history of a family member who is or was very special to you. Scrapbooks dedicated to the memory of a parent or grandparent are popular options. Thumb through vintage photos, and raid your grandmother's stash of old embroidered hankies and costume jewelry. You'll likely come up with a plethora of items for your time line. If your dad or grandfather served in any branch of the military, there will likely be patches, pins and medals in addition to old photos.
Old recipes are wonderful for historical scrapbooks, and there are embellishments galore available at the craft store to complement this topic. Old newspaper clippings are exciting options to add to your scrapbook as well.
Tell other family members about your scrapbooking idea for honoring the history of your family or a specific family member, and they'll likely come up with an item or two for inclusion.
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