10 Creative ideas to make the perfect scrapbook

Scrapbooks are hugely popular, and they are a great way to preserve your precious memories, make plans, or simply document your life from day to day. Every scrapbook is unique to the person who makes it, so it needs to reflect who you are. It’s a great opportunity to get creative, and if you’re looking for inspiration, here are ten ideas to make a truly original scrapbook you will treasure forever.

1. Choose a theme

All the best scrapbooks have a theme. Some people choose to document significant events in their lives, such as their wedding day or the birth of a baby. Others use their scrapbooks to chart their ambitions, such as holiday destinations they want to visit. You may prefer to create a scrapbook around a particular hobby or interest.

Whatever theme you choose, it will dictate the appearance and layout of your scrapbook, as it tells a story in a visual way.

2. Select a colour scheme

Your scrapbook should look vibrant and be filled with colour, but if you want a consistent look throughout, it helps to choose a colour scheme. The right colours to choose might instantly be obvious to you, such as beach colours for a holiday-themed scrapbook, or the colours of the logo of your favourite band if your scrapbook is dedicated to them.

If no ideas come straight away, take inspiration from a favourite photograph you want to include, and let the colours in the picture influence the look of your scrapbook.

3. Decorate your cover

The cover of your scrapbook needs to give clues about what’s inside. You can be as creative as you like here. Draw or paint the cover freehand, use stencils, or make a collage out of relevant items.

To add interest, it helps to include elements which are purely decorative. Many people decorate their scrapbook covers with glitter, rhinestones, buttons or scraps of material to make it look as attractive and interesting as possible.

4. Use the best photographs

Photographs are often our most treasured possessions, so they are likely to be the most important elements of your scrapbook. Choose pictures that really sum up the memories you want to preserve, which capture the essence of people and places, or represent events as closely to the way you remember them as possible.

Using your favourite pictures will make your scrapbook all the more precious to look back on.

5. Add plenty of interesting items

The whole point of a scrapbook is that it is more in-depth and personal than a photo album. For this reason, it shouldn’t just include photographs. These can be hugely enhanced if you also add other items that reflect your experiences, such as bus or train tickets from your holiday excursions, or your baby’s wristband from when they were born.

6. Include lots of text

A scrapbook is a little like a journal, in that it’s about recording your memories or expressing how you feel. Text gives the items in your scrapbook more context, whether it’s explaining how you felt on your wedding day or documenting what you’ve learned about a particular subject.

You can handwrite or type the text, use cutout letters, or a mixture of all three, depending on how you want your scrapbook to look.

7. Organise it with tabs

Your scrapbook doesn’t have to look tidy, but you can keep it organised by making tabs out of washi tape. You can write a description of each photo on its tab, or use them to create little flip albums in your scrapbook if you want to fit more items onto a particular page.

Alternatively, stick them to the edges of pages to create different “chapters”.

8. Use heavy weight paper

Heavy weight paper is essential if you want to keep your scrapbook looking great. Lighter paper can curl up or tear under the weight of the items you stick to it.

Your paper can be coloured, patterned or textured, as long as it is strong enough to hold the items in your scrapbook.

9. Embellish your pages

If you enjoy sketching, include some of your sketches in your scrapbook to capture moments in a more personal way. If you don’t rate your artistic talents, you can still make your scrapbook look beautiful by decorating the edges of the pages with pressed flowers, shells, stickers or even painted patterns.

10. Tell a story

Remember, each page in your scrapbook has a unique story to tell. For example, a page could represent a week of your baby’s early life, or a day of your holiday. Choose the most standout moments, and let your scrapbook reflect the highlights of its theme and what it means to you.