Christine Perry asked:
Most beginners start their first scrapbook
as a chronological album. They have sorted their photos according to date, and start scrapbooking each event in order. However, there are so many other scrapbooking album themes you could use. Don’t limit yourself to just a chronological album. A themed album centered on one topic can inspire you and create a wonderful keepsake for years to come. Scrapbook album themes are nearly limitless when you consider all the topics available to choose from. You could create an album on something as universal as a wedding album, or you could get even more specific to your life and create one centered on a family member, such as, your mother or grandmother. Let’s look at a few of the more common album themes.
Chronological Album
This is by far the most common theme for scrapbooks. Each page focuses on the photos from a specific date or event, and the album usually progresses from earliest dates to later dates. The tendency to start with older photos when scrapbooking comes from seeing all those old photos and realizing how overdue they are to be placed in an album. However, choosing to scrapbook with your most recent photos first and work your way back in time has a distinct advantage. These memories are the freshest in your mind. The older photos get the more likely you have already forgotten details about the event. In addition, working from your most recent photos gives the feeling of being up-to-date. You can work your way back through the old photos when you have time, but the most current photos continue to be placed in your album without creating an additional backlog.
Baby Album
It’s surprising how many scrapbookers first start scrapbooking as a hobby when they have their first baby. Following a baby’s development with photos is a natural thing to do. The photos start stacking up, and you realize that putting them in a photo-safe album is the best way to preserve those memories. A baby album can also be a chronological album. You might start from pregnancy and birth and then baby’s progress from month to month. However, you could also make a baby album of all baby’s firsts. Baby’s first smile, baby’s first word and baby’s first step are just a few ideas.
Wedding Album
Photographs are an important part of any wedding. You have the professional photographs, as well as those taken by guests. A wedding is such a significant event in our lives. Even though it lasts for only a day, we want to preserve those memories for a lifetime. An album theme for a wedding is often more elegantly embellished than other albums. You might consider making a more casual and personal wedding scrapbook, include your own thoughts and feelings about the day. Scrapbook a page about your favorite moment during the wedding, and don’t forget to include those things that were unplanned as well.
Holiday Album
Holidays are great photo opportunities. We gather together with family and friends to celebrate and taking pictures is always a part of the festivities. The more common holiday albums are Christmas and Halloween. However, maybe you have a family reunion every Fourth of July and want to create a photo album specifically for those photos.
School Days Album
An album that follows your child through his school years is really just a more focused chronological album. However, it is unique in that it often holds more memorabilia than most albums. They include art projects, essays, report cards and other mementos from each school year. You can have a school days album for each of your children.
Heritage Album
All scrapbooks are really heritage albums. When the scrapbook is made of archival-safe materials, it preserves your memories for future generations. However, heritage albums usually refer to scrapbooks made from very old photos. You might have photos of your great grandmother or your grandmother’s baby pictures. Having these photos all in one album can be a wonderful conversation piece when family visits. Remember to ask your family to contribute to the journaling in a heritage album so as many memories as possible are documented.
These are just a few ideas for album themes. Begin to think about your photos and reoccurring themes in your pages. Has your teenager son played hockey since he was seven? You might create a hockey album specifically for his team photos and his progress in the sport. Did you take a trip to Europe this year? The number of photos taken on a vacation can easily fill an album.
Working on a scrapbook album theme allows you to choose which album and photos you want to work on today. You aren’t limiting yourself to working in a chronological order. You might want to scrap your daughter’s first smile in a baby album or maybe you want to scrap her first day of kindergarten in school days album. There are no rules to follow. Themed scrapbooks can be completed at one time, like your vacation to Hawaii album, or they can be an ongoing album like a Christmas album. Think about what kind of album theme fits into your life, and start scrapbooking outside the chronological limits.
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Most beginners start their first scrapbook
as a chronological album. They have sorted their photos according to date, and start scrapbooking each event in order. However, there are so many other scrapbooking album themes you could use. Don’t limit yourself to just a chronological album. A themed album centered on one topic can inspire you and create a wonderful keepsake for years to come. Scrapbook album themes are nearly limitless when you consider all the topics available to choose from. You could create an album on something as universal as a wedding album, or you could get even more specific to your life and create one centered on a family member, such as, your mother or grandmother. Let’s look at a few of the more common album themes.Chronological Album
This is by far the most common theme
for scrapbooks. Each page focuses on the photos from a specific date or event, and the album usually progresses from earliest dates to later dates. The tendency to start with older photos when scrapbooking comes from seeing all those old photos and realizing how overdue they are to be placed in an album. However, choosing to scrapbook with your most recent photos first and work your way back in time has a distinct advantage. These memories are the freshest in your mind. The older photos get the more likely you have already forgotten details about the event. In addition, working from your most recent photos gives the feeling of being up-to-date. You can work your way back through the old photos when you have time, but the most current photos continue to be placed in your album without creating an additional backlog.Baby Album
It’s surprising how many scrapbookers first start scrapbooking as a hobby when they have their first baby. Following a baby’s development with photos is a natural thing to do. The photos start stacking up, and you realize that putting them in a photo-safe album is the best way to preserve those memories. A baby album can also be a chronological album. You might start from pregnancy and birth and then baby’s progress from month to month. However, you could also make a baby album of all baby’s firsts. Baby’s first smile, baby’s first word and baby’s first step are just a few ideas.
Wedding Album
Photographs are an important part of any wedding. You have the professional photographs, as well as those taken by guests. A wedding is such a significant event in our lives. Even though it lasts for only a day, we want to preserve those memories for a lifetime. An album theme for a wedding is often more elegantly embellished than other albums
. You might consider making a more casual and personal wedding scrapbook, include your own thoughts and feelings about the day. Scrapbook a page about your favorite moment during the wedding, and don’t forget to include those things that were unplanned as well.Holiday Album
Holidays are great photo opportunities. We gather together with family and friends to celebrate and taking pictures is always a part of the festivities. The more common holiday albums are Christmas and Halloween. However, maybe you have a family reunion every Fourth of July and want to create a photo album specifically for those photos.
School Days Album
An album that follows your child through his school years is really just a more focused chronological album. However, it is unique in that it often holds more memorabilia than most albums. They include art projects, essays, report cards and other mementos from each school year. You can have a school days album for each of your children.
Heritage Album
All scrapbooks are really heritage albums. When the scrapbook is made of archival-safe materials, it preserves your memories for future generations. However, heritage albums usually refer to scrapbooks made from very old photos. You might have photos of your great grandmother or your grandmother’s baby pictures. Having these photos all in one album can be a wonderful conversation piece when family visits. Remember to ask your family to contribute to the journaling in a heritage album so as many memories as possible are documented.
These are just a few ideas for album themes. Begin to think about your photos and reoccurring themes in your pages. Has your teenager son played hockey since he was seven? You might create a hockey album specifically for his team photos and his progress in the sport. Did you take a trip to Europe this year? The number of photos taken on a vacation can easily fill an album.
Working on a scrapbook album theme allows you to choose which album and photos you want to work on today. You aren’t limiting yourself to working in a chronological order. You might want to scrap your daughter’s first smile in a baby album or maybe you want to scrap her first day of kindergarten in school days album. There are no rules to follow. Themed scrapbooks can be completed at one time, like your vacation to Hawaii album, or they can be an ongoing album like a Christmas album. Think about what kind of album theme fits into your life, and start scrapbooking outside the chronological limits.
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Melissa Freedman asked:
Every few years, the scrapbook industry tries to change up the craft, so that trends and design don’t become stale. Sometimes these changes work well…like the introduction of chipboard and glittered paper. But sometimes the changes don’t enhance the beauty or purpose of the craft…the beauty should be found in the meaning of our memories and the purpose should be found in the importance of our pictures.
One such change with an unclear future is the new 6×12 albums, introduced by American Crafts at CHA. The new album size may highlight the current debate among manufacturers and retailers about the future of scrapbooking…
I’m not sure I agree with the trend that the new 6×12 albums may be following. And here is why: I don’t like the recent trends that have moved the industry away from the REASON for SCRAPBOOKING…
From double page layouts to single page layoutsFrom using multiple photos to using one photo per layoutFrom sharing your thoughts through journaling to no journaling on a page…at all And with 6×12 pages…where are our pictures and journaling supposed to fit? We wouldn’t be surprised if we open up a scrapbook magazine and find some of the “top layouts” with no pictures on them at all. Just pretty paper and stickers. Now don’t get me wrong…I LOVE the pretty paper and stickers. In fact, I sell the pretty paper and stickers on the website I co-own.
However, photos and journaling should be the focus of scrapbooking.
And as for trends…they should provide a meaningful change in the way we preserve our memories. Trends should help us to use our pictures, however imperfect or unprofessional they may be, compared with the perfect pictures you see in scrapbook magazines. Trends should compliment the activities we commemorate with our families, friends and pets. And trends should guide us to better design…to help us develop the creativity that lies in each of us.
Trends should not dictate a wholesale change in the make-up and spirit of scrapbooking.
We scrapbook to say the things that are in our hearts, for future generations. That’s why we hope that, rather than making our pages smaller, and less “memoried”…we hope that the industry moves back in the direction from whence it came.
Back to journaling (by hand!), back to showcasing beautiful designs on FULL double-page layouts. And back to it’s purpose of helping all of us create pages that future generations of our families will cherish.
Website content
Every few years, the scrapbook
industry tries to change up the craft, so that trends and design don’t become stale. Sometimes these changes work well…like the introduction of chipboard and glittered paper. But sometimes the changes don’t enhance the beauty or purpose of the craft…the beauty should be found in the meaning of our memories and the purpose should be found in the importance of our pictures.One such change with an unclear future is the new 6×12 albums
, introduced by American Crafts at CHA. The new album size may highlight the current debate among manufacturers and retailers about the future of scrapbooking…I’m not sure I agree with the trend that the new 6×12 albums may be following. And here is why: I don’t like the recent trends that have moved the industry away from the REASON for SCRAPBOOKING…
From double page layouts to single page layoutsFrom using multiple photos to using one photo per layoutFrom sharing your thoughts through journaling to no journaling on a page…at all And with 6×12 pages…where are our pictures and journaling supposed to fit? We wouldn’t be surprised if we open up a scrapbook magazine and find some of the “top layouts” with no pictures on them at all. Just pretty paper and stickers
. Now don’t get me wrong…I LOVE the pretty paper and stickers. In fact, I sell the pretty paper and stickers on the website I co-own.However, photos and journaling should be the focus of scrapbooking.
And as for trends…they should provide a meaningful change in the way we preserve our memories. Trends should help us to use our pictures, however imperfect or unprofessional they may be, compared with the perfect pictures you see in scrapbook magazines. Trends should compliment the activities we commemorate with our families, friends and pets. And trends should guide us to better design…to help us develop the creativity that lies in each of us.
Trends should not dictate a wholesale change in the make-up and spirit of scrapbooking.
We scrapbook to say the things that are in our hearts, for future generations. That’s why we hope that, rather than making our pages smaller, and less “memoried”…we hope that the industry moves back in the direction from whence it came.
Back to journaling (by hand!), back to showcasing beautiful designs on FULL double-page layouts. And back to it’s purpose of helping all of us create pages that future generations of our families will cherish.
Website content
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