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In Victorian times, scrapbooking was huge. With the rise of the catalog and the popular magazine, it became easier than ever before for ordinary people to get access to interesting images. As the craze for collecting them and using them to embellish journals took off, new materials began to be produced specifically for the purpose. Although it fell out of fashion again in the late 20th Century, the digital age has seen new forms of scrapbooking emerge. It can be a wonderful way to celebrate personal stories, jokes and images, and it is more shareable than ever, which adds to the joy of getting creative.
Preserving memories
Scrapbooks originally emerged from journaling, which had been a popular hobby in some social circles since the 1500s. Journals were not quite like the diaries of today in the sense that they were not usually intended to be private; instead, they were shared among friends and passed down in families. In many ways, they served the purpose that platforms like Facebook serve today. Social media platforms, however, offer limited control and can impede the creative process that is important to scrapbooking. That is why modern online scrapbooks are generally built around blogs.
Despite this shift in format, scrapbooks remain great places to record interesting anecdotes and observations from day-to-day life. They can provide a record of special days – including those nobody expected to be special – with pictures bringing the words to life.
Telling stories
Scrapbooks are also good places to write short pieces of fiction, tell favorite family stories or comment on funny or interesting stories in the news. All of these things can help to prompt the memory when looking back at the scrapbook later, and they give it more personality because people change over time and it is easier to see those changes in context. Article clippings, topical images and memes can be used to embellish scrapbook entries like this.
Many people use scrapbooks to showcase favorite poems, whether their own or other people’s (as long as they are not copyrighted). Others use them to host movie trailers, music videos and other pieces of pop culture content that are sure to get their friends talking. Where there is room for comments, scrapbooks can become interactive, and it’s possible to have several contributors, such as family members or people in the same social club, working on one together.
Enjoying beautiful things
Scrapbooks have traditionally been used not just to store written material but also to present it in a beautiful way. They are ideal for showcasing favorite photos, whether those are family snapshots, a record of places visited, or a celebration of a hobby like cooking or quilting. Alongside their own photos, many scrapbookers use stock images to illustrate their posts or simply enjoy sharing amazing shots they’ve found. Starting with images can be a great way to develop a post when inspiration is lacking.
Although words can be powerful, research has shown that most people respond much more strongly to images, which have an impact directly at an emotional level. They can set the tone for a scrapbook and get people laughing or thinking about what’s valuable in life. They can also provide a way of showing people what is special about a particular place or activity. When they’re used to break up text, people actually read more of it rather than less.
Great scrapbooking tools
There are lots of great online resources that can help in the creation of scrapbooks. These are a few of the best:
- ClipClip.org – an easy way to take short snippets and quotations from interesting articles so that they can be pasted into a blog.
- Dreamstime.com – a source for images of all different kinds, categorized to make it easier to find exactly what’s right for any given situation.
- JessicaSprague.com – useful tips and advice for getting started with a scrapbook or taking it in new directions, from written guides to video tutorials.
Simple picture, video and audio editing software is easy to find online, and much of it is free to download and use. It doesn’t take a lot of practice to learn to do simple edits, and there’s extensive free advice online to help with the more popular software. This makes it simple to clip materials into a form that perfectly complements each scrapbook entry.
Every scrapbook changes and improves over time as its creator becomes more adept, which is a big part of their appeal. They are works in progress, and even if they begin in a humble way, they can go on to become something special.
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