Making A Great Scrapbook

Your scrapbook is a bit like a picture diary but with captions and text. And your pictures tell a story about your life, lifestyle and the things you do.

First go through your magazines and find the pictures you like, patterns and other items in the photos that you want to add to your scrapbook.

You can also add photos of special events with captions or balloon/cloud shape text boxes.

You may have an idea for a definite theme for your scrapbook. For example, your general design might have dark colors like red, browns, blues mixed with yellows to depict a more Autumn theme but if your scrapbook has a winter theme then you would use more silver and gold glitter backgrounds, mixed with blue and other pastel colors.

You can create different themed backgrounds for your pages and frames for your photos and pictures. And you can them into a variety of shapes to make your page more exciting.

Use glitter paper and thin colored card cut into stars, hearts, triangles and square. Then glue them to your scrapbook page. Get the pictures you want to use and stick them over the top of the shapes and onto the page and

List of scrapbook materials

• Magazine and newspaper cut outs
• Photos
• Other pictures or text you want to add
• Scissors
• And glue like Pritt Stick

A large A4 size book with plain pages inside is good for scrapbooking as you can decorate the hard cover and stick on the inside over the plain paper.

You could also use individual pieces of colored card for your scrapbook and put them together as a book.

Or you could use 4 or 5 photo collage template pages and put them together. Use hole punchers and string so that you can hang your scrapbook on your wall in your bedroom or downstairs for friends and visitors to look at.

If you don't feel like using glue to stick on your photos and images you could print all your images as stickers and then just stick them on. Then cover over your pages with laminate so that they don't get ripped or marked.

Another idea is to fill the background page and theme first and then stick relevant photos and captions on afterwards. You can also add a cloud or balloon shape for text and write your own text in different colors on it adding a more personal touch to your scrapbook.

What kind of scrapbook are you creating? Are you using a certain color for your theme, a special event, a seasonal event or just to describe your moods and what you're doing on certain days?

Here's a short list to show examples of what themes you can choose for your scrapbook:

• Your summer holiday
• Christmas holidays
• Your birthday
• Your wedding anniversary
• Your college scraps
• A fashion design scrapbook
• Your children's first years

And so on:

You decide on the theme or story line for your scrapbook and then build it according to that theme using relevant photos and other images with captions describing what you're doing or how you're feeling.

Pick a summer theme and use images of the beach, hotels, sightseeing, nightclubs and so on. Or use a wedding theme and show photos of wedding dresses, reception venues, wedding presents and decorations with flowers.

You can also do a scrapbook online using an online scrapbooking website and special collage templates so that you can create and edit your scrapbook whenever you want. Just upload images and text you want to include directly from your computer. Add them to the sections you want to put them in and then use related digital themes and images.