Scrapbooking is keeping a diary, but a very special kind of diary.

Men and women both have been storing their memories and experiences in written and visual form for thousands of years. Some cave paintings in France are over 40,000 years old. But diaries really took off in the 18th century. With cheaper, more plentiful and easier to use paper, keeping a diary became commonplace among royalty and commoner alike.

But a scrapbook is more than just a written diary. It holds photos, snippets of baby’s first hair, a special flower from that first dance… anything and everything that might be important to the scrapbooker. There are as many different items, and as many different styles, as there are individuals who keep a scrapbook. The name may say ’scrapbook’ but it probably should say ‘precious memory book’.

And what’s precious is different for every person – man, woman, girl and boy. One girl may remember vividly that first home run in little league. A boy may want to record that first ribbon won in the spelling bee. A mother will want to keep a newborn baby’s bracelet from the hospital. Dad will want a photo of his son’s graduation from high school.

But for every scrapbook, some selectivity is required. We can’t yet store every item ever encountered. Even one running digital diary of daily thoughts and photos would consume more disk space than all the computers of the world! So, many are built around a theme.

For some it may be a coherent theme maintained across the years – the first kiss, the first published poem, the last love letter. For others, it’s a chronological journal of events in one’s life, however random. For still others it may be the family photo album full of great vacations, supplemented by descriptions, decorations and items gathered on those joyous occasions.

A scrapbook can be large or small, made of paper and plastic or purely electronic. It can be a set of volumes running from birth to death or it can be a single valued album with just the highlights of a life well lived.

But for every scrapbooker it is probably at least one thing: a treasured personal storehouse of disappointments and delights, sad times and joys, lows and highs. Because for every scrapbooker, the act of arranging those concrete reminders is sometimes nearly as important as the memories themselves.

Through scrapbooking we arrange those memories outside ourselves. It allows us to find a springboard that will bring them back to life, however momentarily and faintly or vividly and forever. We bring our experiences to life and re-live them, sometimes with nostalgia, at others with passionate glee.

A scrapbook is forever, passed from hand to hand, generation after generation. It is the history of our lives, told by those who thought them important enough to convey to ourselves and those who came after.

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You’ll need a variety of tools to help you make your scrapbook everything you want it to be.

Basic scissors are a great starting point. But remember to get ones that fit your hand. Scissors come in all sizes and many shapes. Some people work best with ones with small finger holes, others need a larger opening. Some scrapbookers will want ones with very sharp points, others prefer the added safety of rounded corners.

An Xacto knife is another indispensable tool. There are times when it’s ever so much easier to slice on a board rather than cut. Expand on that idea by investing in a cutting or trimming board or mat. That will save your desk or kitchen table from looking like a bunch of airport runways with lines at all angles.

A trimmer will allow you to place a flat object, usually paper, then slice a clean straight line in one motion. There are all sorts of fancy ones with ruled edges, paper holders and other features. Some have interchangeable face plates. But don’t forget the key feature: sharp blades that are safe and easy to use.

A hole punch is another handy tool for scrapbooking. If you print out something on the computer or buy some paper for a scrapbook page it will often be a continuous rectangle. But many scrapbook designs call for storing pages in an album that is similar to a three-ring binder. That creates a need for a hole punch to avoid making ragged-edged punctures in the paper.

Three-hole punches allow you to adjust where the holes should go to fit any scrapbook album style. At the same time, they make it easy to line up the holes and create them with one simple push. But a single-hole punch can be equally useful. Many small items, like an invitation to a special event or a ribbon won in a contest can be stored securely in a scrapbook by making a single, clean hole.

You may want to invest in a cropping tool. Many professionals who have to trim or crop photos find they can’t live without one. They can be as simple as a special pair of scissors or a knife that will trim photos and illustrations to just the right size and shape.

On the higher end of the scale, small machines will allow you to feed your photo in and have it cropped to just the size and shape you want. They also allow a scrapbooker to create a dazzling array of paper or cardboard letters and unique personalized embellishments.

Don’t forget to order a personalized stamp pad or die cut. You can give your scrapbook that unique look that anyone will identify with only you. It could be a personally created design, your name, a logo… anything! Go one step further and get embossing powder and a heat tool and you can permanently encode your own personal design onto any page.

But be sure to add that set of pens and pencils, with stencils and templates, that allow you to journal and color your scrapbook to your own personal taste.

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Oh, what excitement a scrapbooker gets to enjoy when designing a scrapbook! Because, the choice of theme for a single volume or a whole set is unlimited. The opportunities for creativity are boundless.

There are as many scrapbooking themes as there are scrapbookers.

One common theme is perfectly understandable: the baby book. A baby book scrapbook is filled with all sorts of memorabilia about the baby from even before birth to well into childhood. You can record that first decisive pregnancy test. Mom can snip the baby’s bracelet from the hospital. The first shoelaces and a piece of the last diaper may be on one page, the streamer from a bicycle or a photo of the first camp vacation away from home on another.

A scrapbooker’s life may be filled with people and places that cry out for journaling. An exciting trip to Greece can be recorded with photos of that beautiful green-blue sea. A cruise to Mexico can be remembered by a napkin, a multi-colored ribbon or a pressed chili pepper. A wonderful time spent at a bed and breakfast in New England can be kept forever by a pressed maple leaf or picture of that glorious sunset on the Atlantic.

A scrapbook may revolve around a single person who played an important role in your life. A photo of a favorite teacher can sit above a paragraph recorded from class. A pair of knitting needles from grandmother may begin and end a journal dedicated to her memory. A cherished friend may be immortalized in pages filled with letters or memorabilia of happy outings.

Or, a scrapbook may embrace the whole extended family in a heritage theme. Pictures of a funny uncle may start the page that ends with a letter from a favorite aunt. A CD can sit in a sleeve. Remove it and hear the voice of a sister when she was 15 or a father when he was 80. For digital scrapbookers, add a video to the collection and get the whole family in the act at Christmas.

Make a scrapbook that captures the many colors of your moods as you wend through life. Color a page gray for that somber day when you had quiet thoughts that kept you subdued but pondering. Use it as a background for the leaf you collected that day or the poem you wrote. Make a bright yellow and blue page for that day when all was sunny. Fill it with a photo of your best friend. Snip a piece of fur from the tail of that loving dog who shared your joy.

Music, events, personal triumphs and tragedies, shared experiences and private moments. Every possible form of human history is appropriate for a scrapbook theme. Let your creativity loose and fill journals with the mementos of the rich tapestry of your life.

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Almost all scrapbooks are a combination of words and images. Images are terrific because they bring to mind so many associations. They trigger memories. But recording thoughts and feelings about those memories is what journaling is all about.

For some, that effort will be a simple recording of the events of the day or occasion: who came to the Christmas dinner, who brought what presents to a baby shower. Those words, even when plain, do more than just record the facts, though. They themselves will trigger memories later on down the road.

But many will want to go beyond the simple facts surrounding the images in a scrapbook. They will want right away to go to the personal meaning of those images and events. Anyone who does is in good company. Journaling is much the same as keeping a diary and that has been done by some of the world’s finest writers for centuries.

But don’t be intimidated. Your journal doesn’t have to be a world-class literary effort. After all, it’s for you and maybe a close friend or loved one. It only has to be what you want to put down and the way you want to say it.

You’ll find that over time your thoughts will flow more easily than they do at first. Like anything, writing is a skill that comes more easily with practice. The first day you may struggle to come up with anything beyond the bare facts. But before long, you’ll find your words flowing out to capture just what you want to say.

To help prompt your journaling you can look to any number of sources of inspiration. A cherished novel, a personal poem, a great song, a moving movie…. It could be anything. A simple search online will allow you to find a thousand quotes in a few seconds. Some of them will express just the sentiment you were reaching for. Use them freely.

Sometimes you’re in the mood to journal and sometimes you’re not. But whenever you can, take that passionate thought you just can’t hold back and put it down as soon as possible. That will make your scrapbook journaling so much easier because you’ll be on fire to get your words on paper. Use that emotion to drive your pen.

Don’t feel that you need to be limited to writing in formal sentences and paragraphs on one part of the page. It’s your scrapbook and your journal. Write around the edges. Start in the middle or at the bottom. Write upside down, if you want!

You can tell a story associated with the images on the page, real or invented. You can write a poem just for you. You can say how happy you were or how angry. Read what you wrote later and add to it, cross it out, paste a photo over it, or tear the page out and burn it. Or, share it with all your friends. It’s your journal and you can do whatever you want.

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For generations, scrapbooks were made of paper and plastic. And those still make for great media to record your memories. But since the invention of the personal computer and, even more so, the Internet, scrapbooking has reached new heights. Scrapbooking has gone digital.

Not so much a replacement for offline scrapbooking, digital scrapbooks expand the range of options. New forms of creativity, easier production and manipulation of images and text, and all sorts of other benefits flow from digital scrapbooking. But before talking about some of them, it’s best to explore just what digital scrapbooks are.

Digital scrapbooks either create or store those treasured photos, poems, journal entries and more on a computer. The source of the images can be either from a digital camera, some photos scanned by a scanner or off the Internet itself. The text can be a old diary scanned or re-typed, created using word processing software, or copied from any of the millions of sites around the world.

Many scrappers prefer a mix of offline and digital scrapbooking. That allows them to use all the tools for creativity available – image manipulation software, text editors, as well as craft skills like coloring, sewing, hand illustration or calligraphy.

Many software packages exist to help the scrapbooker create and manipulate images on a computer. Photoshop is one of the most well known, but there are many others. Mastering one takes practice, but most can be picked up and used in no time for basic functions like copying, cropping and changing basic attributes.

You may want to change the resolution, the image size, select and mix portions of the image or change the colors and contrast. With image software, that’s easy to do. And it can be done with more than just photographs.

Scrapbooks contain all kinds of images: copies of reality, pure imaginative inventions and a mixture of the two. Image software provides a range of functions for integrating drawings with photos, zooming, layering text over images and much more. Very high-end packages like the pros use cost hundreds of dollars. But there are many others that range from free to just a few dollars.

Fortunately, both image and text can go both ways using a computer – in or out. You can use a digital camera to create an image, then upload it to the computer using supplied hardware and software. You can use image manipulation software to alter or just print it, then put the output into your offline scrapbook.

But you can also create text off line, scan it into the computer and store the results forever. You can use word processing software to make it easy to copy huge blocks of text, change fonts and print it out to add journaling to your hardcopy scrapbook.

Computers add sound and video capability to go beyond a manual scrapbook. You can record the baby’s first word or first step. You can store those experiences forever on the hard drive, on an Internet storage area or burn them to a CD. Store the CD inside your offline scrapbook and you have a complete album containing text, photos, words and video.

The possibilities are limited only by your boundless imagination.

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One of the most exciting aspects of scrapbooking is the opportunity to exercise your own creativity. Nowhere is that greater than in the process of making your own patterns. Patterns can be created in and on paper, plastic, die-cuts, metal, ribbon and cloth….  In short, just about anything!

You might want a great border to dress up a page of your scrapbook. You can use crayons, pens, colored pencils or chalk to draw exactly what you want. You don’t even have to be an artist who can ‘draw straight lines’. Straight lines are easy, just use a ruler. But patterns are easy, too. If you can’t draw well freehand there are dozens of pre-made shapes to help you.

Suppose the photos on your scrapbook page are of a great vacation to the Bahamas. You can extend the theme and give your photos a great setting by creating a sky-and-sea pattern. A chalk swath across the top of light blue, a few white swirls, and voila! Or, you may have a heritage album with terrific photos of your grandfather from the 1940s. A cut-out pattern in subtle browns to offset the shades of gray in a black and white photograph works well.

But making patterns isn’t limited to drawing. You can pierce the paper, add ribbons and more.

You can make individual piercings in paper or fold it to create a repeating pattern. The holes can be purely decorative, say a pattern of hearts and diamonds to dress up your Las Vegas vacation. Or, they can provide a space to allow photos, text and illustrations to show through. You can even jazz up the border around the holes with colored ink and combine patterns of different types.

Baby-themed scrapbooks are a popular choice for exercising creativity making patterns with ribbons and cloth. You can make miniature ‘curtains’ that cover a delicate baby photo. Just use flexible cloth, thread sewing thread through a loop at the top and glue the string at both ends to the page. Repeat the ‘curtains’ across the page and you’ve got a whole gallery.

Or just dress up the page by finding a colored or patterned ribbon you like and frame a border around the entire page, separate it into four quarters, or underline some text. You can make a thousand and one patterns just using simple, decorative strips of cloth.

You can even use your computer to make patterns that would be hard to draw. Many graphics software packages allow you to easily create patterns unlike any you’ve ever seen. Or copy an image from the Internet that strikes your fancy. It’s easy to paste that image into a document and manipulate it. Then print it out with your color inkjet printer. You can crop it, cut it into an interesting shape to surround photos or text, or use it for a great looking border on a scrapbook page.

There’s no limit to the patterns you can find. And if you don’t find what you want, make your own!

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Almost every scrapbook will contain a combination of text and drawings or photos. After all, the whole purpose of a scrapbook is to capture your experiences and memories for all time. One of the most common ways we do that is to record words and images. There is an infinite number of ways to do that to express your unique creativity.

Many scrapbookers will write descriptions under photos. But even simple text recording the date and location doesn’t have to be plain. You can dress it up by using an interesting font. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have the skill to create one, there are hundreds you can buy. Or, you can find one on the Internet, print it out and paste it under the photo.

Now that you’ve got your creative juices warmed up, you can take your scrapbook to the next level.

Images always bring to mind more than just what’s shown in the photo or drawing. They bring all sorts of associations with them. Those bring more memories to mind, and those in turn still more. Use that to spice up your text in both content and form.

Turn a simple phrase into a work of art by enlarging it, splitting the sentence in half, turning it upside down, coloring it, moving some words above or below the others, separating them off…. The possibilities are endless. But be clever and do more than just alter them at random. Let the associations those images bring to mind guide you.

A photo of a snow-capped mountain from a winter vacation may bring to mind two levels, separated by the snow line. Shape your sentence into a triangle and color the words on top in white, while those below are soft greens and browns. An image of delightful deer bouncing through a forest suggests movement. Let your words dance by running them up, down, up, down on top of the picture.

Make a window page, with photos covered by small square flaps that reveal or cover the photo as you want. Then place your text on the outside to give a preview or on the inside to label the photo.

Now go 3-D. Many scrapbooks are two dimensional and the creativity they display within those boundaries is amazing. But use that third direction to bring your scrapbook to a whole new level.

Scrapbook cubes are a great way to get started loosening up those limitations in your thinking. Make a photo cube by cropping photos and placing them on a cube made of plastic, cardboard or metal. You can make your own or buy just the size you want.

Paste the photos on the cube, then use text to describe and decorate. Simple phrases can be placed above or below the photos, just as you would on a scrapbook page. But how about taking advantage of that third dimension and laying them on the edge? They can stream out along a ribbon or lay across a corner.

There’s only one limit to the way you can creatively combine photos and text in your scrapbook: your imagination.

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One of the great things about scrapbooking is how inexpensive it is to get started. All you need are a few basic supplies that don’t cost much. Unless you do all your scrapbooking digital style (on the computer), you’ll need something to store all your memories in. So, the first requirement is a good album.

You can go with any size that suits your fancy. Two standard sizes are 8 1/2 in x 11 in and 12 in x 12 in, but you could go with 11 in x 14 in for those larger photos. Even larger albums are available if you want to make a really special gift for yourself or a cherished friend or relative. A basic 8 1/2 x 11 album will go for around $10 and a 12 in x 12 in album is usually less than $20.

Don’t worry about finding paper and other supplies if you go larger. Paper comes in every size from 1 in x 1 in Post-It notes to 2 feet x 3 feet or larger. Art stores are a good second alternative if you can’t find just what you want in the scrapbooking section. And all sizes come in all sorts of colors and designs. Your imagination is the only limit, not the materials available.

You’ll need something to cut and trim the paper, so a sharp pair of scissors and an Xacto knife are really helpful. A sturdy paper trimmer is always helpful for those who aren’t very steady with scissors or knife.

Remember, you don’t always cut exactly straight lines or 90 degree angles, though. Sometimes you may want to create a round page, a hexagonal page or some other shape to go with your design. Sometimes interesting items call for an equally interesting background. A good stencil or template will help there.

Part of that design will usually be hand written or drawn, words and illustrations. So, you’ll need some good pens and pencils. A range of colors is helpful. Start with basic black and expand as your needs grow. Green on red paper or red on green paper is great for Christmas, but don’t forget about all the other holidays. And, also, as far as a scrapbook is concerned, every day might be a holiday.

You’ll need some adhesive to attach photos, locks of hair, buttons, ribbons, poems on cards or paper…. In short, anything you might want to put into your scrapbook! Old-fashioned small bottles of paper glue with a small brush in the top still work well, provided you get the acid-free type. But take advantage of technology advances and get yourself a glue stick, glue dots or double-sided tape for those small, quick additions.

If you like to create on the computer, you’ll want to experiment with different kinds of paper for printouts. But you’ll also want to invest in some CDs and recording or CD burning software. That way you can easily record the baby’s first word or a favorite piece of music. You can store the CD in the scrapbook or just make it part of your overall scrapbooking collection.

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Scrapbookers have taken to vellum as the perfect material for enhancing their creative efforts.

In olden days, paper was unknown. The technology for processing wood into pulp for writing simply didn’t exist. Instead, animal skins (usually calves, but often goats and lambs) were stretched and dried to make a flat surface that would accept ink. That’s why you see so many ancient books that have a special look.

Modern vellum is very different but the look is much the same. Translucent, veined and very delicate, vellum provides an elegant addition to scrapbook design efforts. But it can be a little tricky to use correctly.

Vellum isn’t as porous as paper so inks and glues have to be applied with care.

Since it doesn’t absorb ink as readily as paper, you need to be a little more patient with vellum. Allow ample time to dry. Some never will fully dry without help. You can sprinkle a little talcum powder on the surface and blow the remainder gently away.

Vellum can be fragile, but with care it can still be used in a computer printer. Here again it’s important to allow ample time for the ink to dry. If you print more than one page, remove the first one before the second prints out. If one side is shinier than the other use it for printing.

Since most vellum shows through the page with just a little light, you need to take care with adhesives. Unless you want the glue to show up, try a very thin layer, say by spraying. Or, use a machine such as the Xyron if you want to cover the entire back of the page. That can allow you to use vellum to make a soft cover for a special look on a wedding-oriented page, or for any other creative use.

Any glue used should be acid free. A good acid-free glue stick can be the perfect tool to attach the corners of a vellum page to your scrapbook. It won’t become yellow or brittle over time. But give it ample time to dry by keeping the book open longer than you normally would. If your corners show through because of the adhesive you can hide them cleverly with page corners and other design elements.

Be sure to use quality vellum that is both acid-free and lignin-free. Acid (usually weak sulfuric acid) is what eats parchment away over time. That’s why old books have yellow pages. That old look may be just what you want, but it will eventually make your pages brittle and fragile.

You can punch holes in vellum and doing so can make for a beautiful design. Take care when folding if you want to make multiple cut-outs with a single punch. Creative tearing can produce a rough edge to give your scrapbook page that medieval look.

Vellum is great for wedding or heritage scrapbooks, but it’s an equally great choice anytime you want that look that only vellum can provide.

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You could use old-fashioned rubber cement for your scrapbook. If you do, look for ones that are acid free. But you might want to take advantage of newer technology to save mess and get convenience. There are many types of adhesive and dispensers available. They’ll make attaching your memories to scrapbook pages easy and secure.

One key point has already been mentioned: make sure the adhesive is acid-free. Scrapbook items are meant to be kept for years, even generations. Even archival quality paper can endure only if there’s no acid to eat away at it. That acid can be in the paper itself, the glue or even (in very small quantities) the air. Minimize it and your scrapbook can last practically forever.

Adhesive comes in all forms today.

Glue sticks are quick and convenient but the cheaper ones might contain glue that turns brittle over the years. That will lead to items falling out that need to be re-glued. Sometimes they’ll fall out at the worst time and get damaged. Invest in good glue.

Foam squares are a great form of adhesive for photos, small paper items and other scrapbooking material. They’re thicker than paper, so they’ll give a layered effect. They come in sheets so you can separate off one foam square or a strip or a larger square as you need to. They’re really great at holding heavier items in place, too.

Glue dots are another type of adhesive that every scrapbooker will want in the tool kit. They’re similar to double-sided tape in that they adhere to the page and the item. They can bond vellum, transparencies, embellishments and so much more. They’re transparent themselves so only the item will be highlighted, not the adhesive.

Double-sided tape performs a similar service and it comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and strengths. Some double-sided tape allows you to hold a lightweight item in place firmly, but will release it with a firm tug. That way you can move, rearrange or replace anything you need.

These work great for photos. You may want to take a snapshot out for copying, or to have it enlarged. With double-sided tape you can remove the picture without damaging the back then put it back into the scrapbook later. Photo squares or corner pockets perform this function well, too, but they’re a little more time consuming to place.

Get a variety of convenient dispensers that will place glue dots, single or double-sided tape, and a number of other adhesive forms. For those larger jobs, such as glueing a piece of vellum on, consider a spray can of quality, acid-free glue. At the same time, pick up some of the decorative tapes and adhesive ribbons that fit in some of them. Add some style to your scrapbook as you place your items securely and safely.

Last, but not least, check out some adhesive removers. They, too, come in convenient and safe forms. They’ll allow you to unglue many items for substitution and rearranging. After all, your scrapbook may be permanent, but your design doesn’t have to be!

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