Make Scrapbooks More Interesting with Journal Notes and Pressed Pennies

Scrapbooking is time consuming and can be expensive so why should I spend my time doing it? The easiest answer is simply that scrapbooks are irreplaceable and unique ways to capture all of your memories. Photo albums do not offer the same kind of charm that a scrapbook does.

It is very easy to get your pictures developed and put them into a photo album. Ten years from now you might look back on that photo album and not remember half of the things that happened during the trips except for what you can see in the pictures themselves.

By choosing to scrapbook your pictures instead you can look back at not just the pictures but at each little souvenir you put on the pages of your scrapbook.

Scrapbooks can be more than just "cute" pieces of paper with photographs stuck on them. During your vacation or any event that you want to commemorate make a special attempt to collect fun souvenirs like a business card from the best place you ate during your trip. Grab flyers from your kids sporting events or programs from an award ceremony. Everything that you can add to your scrapbook pages will make it more memorable.

One really great way to capture the feel of each trip you document in your scrapbook is to carry along a journal during your travels. My husband and I travelled cross country over a 16 day period visiting everything from Disneyworld, the Grand Canyon, The Alamo, to the Hollywood sign. We kept what we called the "Capitan's Log" which ended up to be many pages of hilarious notes about everything we did along the way. We made notes about the temperature, what song was on the radio, funny things we saw and did, what we thought about each place we went, things that we ate at different stops, and souvenirs we found at each place. You name it and we wrote about it. It helped pass the time in the car and every time I pick up a page and read it I am reminded of something funny we had done that I had forgotten about.

When I created our scrapbook to document the trip I sorted out all of my pictures and souvenirs by day. Then I took our Capitan's Log and broke it up into days and I printed it on fun travel themed paper. At the start of each day of my scrapbook I inserted the corresponding pages from the Capitan's Log. Now when you look through the scrapbook you can read about the stuff we did during the day and the pictures make even more sense and it feels like you just got back from the trip. It also explains why some pictures are blurry or who that strange person is standing next to you!

Another fun way to make scrapbooks interesting is to pick an item and collect them each place you go. You can do napkins, or matchbooks (you might need to alter them to put them in the scrapbook), even hotel stationary. I like to collect pressed pennies and add them to the pages of my scrapbooks. You would really be surprised how frequently you see pressed penny machines around. I have found press pennies at zoos, rest areas, and even at the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico.

Scrapbooking is just a great way to be creative and document the fun things you have done. It is easy to get started as any craft store typically has tons of scrapbooking materials available. Look on line for a large variety of paper and embellishments that will help each of your photographs stand out!