Creative Approaches to Scrapbooking Your Favorite Page Topics

Great artists create around recurring subjects again and again. Georgia O’Keefe painted flowers, barren landscapes and close-up still lifes.

Annie Leibovitz is a photographer who takes intimate portraits.

And Jane Austen wrote about love and marriage, examining the role of women in society at her time.

What’s your recurring theme? What subject do you love scrapbooking?

Our creative team shares their favorite subjects and scrapbooking approaches for them.

A Creative Approach to Scrapbooking Events:

Zoom in on a single aspect of an annual event that remains constant. 

Devra Hunt loves capturing family events in her scrapbook pages.

Devra says, “Every year on his birthday we buy our son a dozen balloons. Each year we do this, he realizes more and more it’s a special day for him.”

“I love to scrapbook my children. I used to scrapbook the things they did as they were growing up, such as going to the park, visiting the zoo, or playing with their friends. Now that they are older, there are fewer of these opportunities. I try to capture unique pieces of their personality through feelings and emotions.”

“Here I’m showing the pure joy these balloons bring my son year after year. The look on his face hasn’t changed. I could share his joy in other ways, but his smile and reaction is genuine. I love to look at his beautiful smile knowing that is truly how he feels.”

 

A Creative Approach to Scrapbooking Travel

Don’t forget to capture the sights and experiences that take place in your own backyard!

Amy Kingsford‘s scrapbook pages are mostly about her family’s travels these days.

Amy says, “Most of the photos and stories I scrapbook go into our family vacation album, however, on this page, I rounded up some of the beautiful scenery and landmarks that we have had the privilege of living right next to and told the story of how my family has lived in Utah dating back five generations.”

“I find I’m always so inspired to scrapbook our travels because we are seeing and experiencing so many new things. But enjoyed showcasing the wonders of our home state in this page and finding the beauty and appreciation for the sights we pass by every day!”

 

A Creative Approach to Scrapbooking Everyday Life

Take a “photos-of-the-month” approach to scrapbooking everyday life.

Marcia Fortunato has been making “photo-of-the-month” pages for the past five years.

She says, “On one random day each month I send a text to my family members asking them to send me a photo from that day, which I then scrapbook. This photo-of-the-month project has been going on for almost five years now, and these have become some of my favorite pages to create and my family’s favorite scrapbooks.”

“The challenge with this type of repetitive project is to maintain a measure of unity but also have enough variety to keep it interesting to create as well as to look through. It can be also be challenging to accommodate so many photos on my layout, especially as our family has grown from nine at the start to now twelve.”

“To deal with these challenges, I’ve needed to get a bit creative at times. This year I settled on a two-page grid format each month which gave me enough space to work with and made my process much faster. I use approximately the same photo layout but vary the papers to fit the month and season. I also vary the way that my photos are labeled, sometimes with a caption below each photo, sometimes with speech bubbles, sometimes with a list of the comments that have arrived with the photos and referring back to each person’s picture, but always in some way identifying whose picture is whose.”

“When scrapbooking a recurring project like this, my suggestion is to start with something that remains the same each time then tweak it as needed or desired. I start with the same template, but this could also be something like a consistent background, title/font, or way of journaling. This will not only help to speed up the creation process but will also lend continuity and unity to the final product.”

A Creative Approach to Scrapbooking Your Children

Don’t shy away from capturing their differences or challenges.    

Jana Oliveira‘s favorite scrapbook page subject is her son.

She says, “This layout is about the challenges that my son has overcome in his various activities–in the case of this layout, PT and gymnastics. It is a record of how far he has come and how much he is accomplishing.”

“I do a lot of pages about my son since his birth and my scrapbook pages about him are not necessarily ordinary stories that a mom might tell about her child, but rather they are stories of his accomplishments as an Autistic individual. They are a record of how important it is for him to be who he is and that despite his Autism, he gets to do things like any other kid. So I love to talk about this in my personal pages.”

 

A Creative Approach to Scrapbooking You

Try looking back into your past for interesting stories to tell.

Marie-Pierre Capistran enjoys scrapbooking about herself, both past and present.

She says, “This page is about a Christmas story contest I won when I was little. One of my favorite subjects to scrapbook about is my childhood. I love to dig into my box of ephemera and reminisce about the time when I was little. Especially now that I have young kids, it’s a fun perspective to have.”

“For this page I used a newspaper clipping. I love that it tells the story of the contest, that it shows the story I wrote and that there’s also a photo of the winners, including myself. I had to add very little details to my layout.”

“If you want to scrapbook stories of your past, I’d highly recommend starting from an ephemera. If you don’t have any, maybe other family members have some. You can ask around. You could take photo of the ephemera to add it to your layout.”