Ideas for Scrapbooking Inventory Photos that Record Your Everyday Life

An inventory photo is like a list — it’s a quick way to convey rich detail quickly and a great source of ideas for scrapbooking your life. The Get It Scrapped Creative Team shares one dozen ideas for everyday life inventories you can take and record on your scrapbook pages today.

Celeste Smith says, “These are the contents of my purse.”

“I laid my purse and all of its contents out on a large piece of white poster board. I love the way it came out looking like a collection. When I edited the photo, I used Levels in Photoshop and the white eyedropper to select the white background of the photo so it was really white. Then my bottom layer is just filled with white. I think it gives the appearance that the items are laying on the page. Once I had the photo all settled I decided to keep it simple and just add a couple strips of patterned paper and a flower to the page. To keep it somewhat flat I used a font instead of alphas for my title.”

Kiki Kougiomtzi says, ” This is my favorite bag for the summer.”

“It has room for all the necessary things and only one downside: it can’t hold my DSLR. But that’s OK because my mobile phone has a decent camera. To enhance the instant moment of the photo I made a faux polaroid frame from patterned  paper. I used office inspired labels for my journaling, and I pinned them with brads (like notes on a pinboard). Arrows from the labels point to elements in the photo that serve multipurpose (and I list most of them on the relevant label). To enhance the feeling of daily routine I used ledger paper for my background. To support my title I used a gears mask.”

Sian Fair says, “I took this photo of my husband’s bedside table in the early morning over a year ago as part of a photo-a-day challenge.”

“Now that I’ve scrapbooked it and discovered how perfectly it records one little moment, I’ll be going back and taking photos of everyone’s bedside tables regularly. When I pulled out this picture to scrapbook it, the first thing that struck me was its intimacy: it’s a simple picture but it pulls me in because it captures a personality so perfectly. It wasn’t staged. I decided to try to keep that close, early-morning feel with darker colors and papers which refer closely to the photo. I like the contrast between the masculine background paper and the flowers: an echo of the décor of lots of couples rooms, I think! and the title? It has a two-fold meaning. The seeds are there, but the seeds of a life are there too.”

Alexis Aragona says, “This story is about my new interest in makeup, so I took inventory of what products and tools I have.”

“Instead of literally narrating what I have, my journaling (taking up half the page!) tells the bigger story of how makeup is helping me love myself, and that it’s only a step in my longer journey to better take care of myself. Michelle Godin’s kit carried the perfect message I wanted to tell myself.”

Christy Strickler says, “This is an inventory of my son’s current wardrobe.”

“I took photos of clothes in his closet and bureau. I didn’t feel like the photo of the closet really showed the types of t-shirts he prefers. I pulled a few out and arranged them to show the images on the shirts. I also pulled a pair of shorts from the drawer and shot a photo of them separately. I wanted a photo of my son on the layout. I decided to take a photo of  just his feet. It makes him a part of the layout, but at the same time focuses on his shoes( supporting the inventory of his clothing).  To create the title, I searched for synonyms for the word ” inventory. I liked Cache because of the alliteration. I chose clothing themed paper,a sewing pattern, and boy themed embellishments. I found sections of the sewing pattern which have teen boy printed on them. This is a subtle nod towards my son’s age. Office style products like the boy shaped paperclip and the label maker add to the inventory theme of the layout. I created a label marked contents and then created a simple list for my journaling.”

 

Marcia Fortunato says, “An inventory of the shoes lying around our house offers up clues about our family.”

“I walked around my house one day and took pictures of various clusters of shoes. Some shoes were missing because the owner was currently wearing them, others are out of season; some are worn on an almost daily basis and others only once in awhile. I used talk bubbles to let the shoe clusters ‘speak’ for themselves and tell their stories. Because the talk bubbles double as embellishments, I kept other embellishments to a minimum, only adding a small label, a few shiny black stars to give a bit of sparkle and lead the eye around the page, and a string tied in a bow on the journal tag to mimic a tied shoelace.”

Stefanie Semple says, “My jewelry collection should be in a single drawer, but a bit of it it usually escapes its confines.”

“I used trailing greenery as the entrance point to the layout. A metal heart cues the jewelry subject. I added white brushwork beneath the journaling to make it more visible. I love that the layout has two distinct sections and that the journaling forms an integral part of the design. The three photos are in series and move from the necklaces hanging on the wall to the items in the drawer and then a close-up of a favorite piece. I love pearls and flowers and feel that my layouts and jewelry choices reflect this. I framed the layout with narrow black matting to keep the eye within its confines. Without it, the arrangement felt too loose.”

Rosann Santos-Elliott says, “This page is an inventory of my trunk.”

“The story is about daily life as it’s reflected in my vehicle. It’s amazing how much my trunk tells whomever looks in it what we are up to during any given day or week.”

Lise Mariann Alsli says, “My little family are readers. We love books and have overflowing book shelves.”

“This layout shows each of our top 5 books from our book collection at the moment.  Originally I wanted to list all of our books, but since we have hundreds of books I gave that idea up. I then figured that a snapshot of our favorite books at the moment from our collection could be even more interesting. So I told my husband and my daughter to find their top 5 books and I photographed our choices. The journaling spot tells the story about our love of books. The tags behind each photo can be pulled out and behind them are the name of the owner of the list and the list of the books on the picture. Since books are a language of symbols I also chose to include a owl because of the wisdom books give and an apple because of Isaac Newtons famous apple in the head. Books give us new ideas.”

Carrie Arick says, “This page is about the items in my kitchen I use to prepare and serve food. To some they may seem excessive, but to me they are absolutely essential.”

“I used a food-themed digital kit by One Little Bird to compose the layout. The background paper reminded me of a vinyl table cloth, so I decided to treat it like one. I created a runner (band) for the middle of the table (page).  That created a solid foundation for the rest of my page parts both thematically and structurally.  Since I used two busy photos, I decided to make one black and white to keep the eye from being overwhelmed and make sure the framed photo stood out. The scalloped circle behind the band is really a piece of word art. I loved how the shape of it worked with the page and the color completed my visual triangle made with that color blue, but the word didn’t fit the theme. Tucking it behind the band was the perfect compromise!”

Katie Scott says, “We did a major house revamp and clean and my son’s room is always particularly difficult.”

“Because he shares the same type of emotional attachment to stuff that I do, these photos are mid-clean up. I used the scalloped punched shapes at the top and bottom of the page to list the types of things that my son’s room contains:  legos, books, stuffed animals, etc.    I also used white letters over the busy photos for the title since we were trying to create order with all of that stuff. I took photos of my son’s stuff as we were doing the clean sweep and also a photo of him and his favorite couch which was sacrificed to the clean sweep.”

Amanda Robinson says, “This page takes inventory of our family, fur-babies and all!”

“It sometimes feels like the hardest this to keep a track of is our family members with our large collection of pets, so this page takes inventory of the members of our household. I needed to keep my page design simple as I chose to use a thumbnail picture of each person or animal on my layout. I used just a few simple embellishments and a shipping tag listing our names in photo-order, as my journaling spot.”

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