Your flower garden does not have to be a forgotten memory once it dies off at the beginning of winter. Scrapbook your garden. Here are ways to preserve the flowers, leaves, and vines to use in many projects over the course of the winter.

You may want the first scrapbook to be a replica of your flower garden in order to have a record of which flower was planted in each part of the garden so as to plan for next year's design. Each page in your scrapbook can be a different part of your garden; for example, the wildflower garden, rose garden, climbing vines on the trellises, etc.

Here are directions to scrapbook your garden. Read all of the directions and then complete one step at a time. It could take several days to collect everything depending on how many flowers and leaves you are able to press at one time. Do not cut any flowers or leaves until you are ready to press them so their beauty will be preserved.

GATHER YOUR GARDEN MATERIALS

1. Get a good quality digital camera with a nice zoom feature and take photos of the different garden beds. Photograph close-ups of the flowers. Then take photos of the individual flower beds followed by photos of the entire grouping. The photos will be used in your scrapbook to re-create the garden in the same layout. If you need a digital camera, I wrote an article called, "Choosing The Best Digital Camera For Your Needs". The link is beneath this article.
2. Examine the flowers in your garden and choose the best specimens for the scrapbook projects. Choose flowers that are in different stages of blooming and of varied sizes. The scrapbook pages will look more natural with smaller buds among the larger blooms.
3. Now it is time to collect a variety of vines including flowering vines, green leafy vines, and some older brown vines. The brown vines need to still be a little pliable so you can work with them. They can be used as stems in the garden scrapbook, as wreaths in a holiday scrapbook, and as vines in a summer or beach scrapbook.
4. Snip fresh leaves in several shades of green and in several different sizes and shapes. Collect the fallen autumn leaves in different colors. However, do not collect dry or curled leaves as they will crumble when pressed.
5. Gather small twigs and medium size sticks. They should not be so dry that the bark is falling off of them. The sticks can be used in a variety of scrapbook projects. They can be used to recreate trellises in the garden scrapbook, as scarecrows in a Halloween scrapbook, as snowmen in a winter scrapbook, etc.

PRESERVE YOUR GARDEN

1. Begin with the largest blooms first as they are the most fragile. Carefully cut the stem as close to the flower as possible without having the petal fall apart. Compress the flowers in the scrapbook pockets. Use double-sided tape to keep them in place. If you have a lot of flowers to compress, then used the old standby phone book when you run out of scrapbook pockets.
2. Once the flowers are compressed, and this could take several days, then laminate them. Lamination will allow you to work with the flowers and not have the petal fall apart.
3. The leaves can be laminated or you can coat them with lacquer. Coat them thoroughly to prevent crumbling.
4. Use a paint brush to apply a generous coat of lacquer to the sticks and twigs. This is because they contain tannin which will stain the pages of the scrapbook.

THE SCRAPBOOK

Upload the digital images to your computer. Using either Photoshop or its free equivalent, crop or otherwise touch up any images that need to have this done. Then print the images that will be used in your current scrapbook project. The nice thing about using a digital camera is that you can re-use the images in a variety of scrapbook projects, photo holiday cards, photo albums, and wall displays for many years to come.

Decide on a layout for each page of your scrapbook. Then place the photos where you want them on each page. Recreate the part of the garden that is in the photo and place it either beside or around the photo.

Store the leftover garden flowers, leaves, and twigs to use for future projects --- not just scrapbooks but as decorations on wreaths, for candle centerpieces, on homemade gift cards, as wall hangings mounted inside of glass picture frames, and many other crafts.