Find scrapbook themes from your life

"What kind of scrapbook themes will make sense for me?" "I have a mountain of photos. How do I begin to organize them?" When they're beginning to scrapbook, people often ask me questions like these.

Although it's ultimately a personal decision how you organize your scrapbook and album projects, there are a few guidelines that might be useful for you as you think about your scrapbook themes.

Chronological

Probably the one used most often is simply a chronological approach. Sit down with all your photographs (or take a look at your digital images on your computer) and begin sorting through your photos by decades.

Don't get hung up if you don't remember exactly when the photo was taken - just give a ballpark date and keep working. Once you have them roughly divided into 10 year piles, you can sort them by year. Again, don't worry if you remember exactly -- it's not that important.

If you have an enormous number of photos, you might want start with doing your first scrapbook of one single year. If so, divide the year's worth of photos into months. Crop January photos and do a Power Layout. (A Power Layout is taking blank scrapbook pages or power layout guides Steve – is this to ‘deep in’ to trust the link? Can I have an image of a power layout guide? and laying out each page.) When you're ready to scrapbook you'll have the basic organizational scheme ready!

Let's think about other scrapbooks themes

Other than chronological, it is fun sometimes to do a scrapbook of a particular event or interest. For example -- let's say your daughter is an amazing soccer player and she plays a game every weekend. You might enjoy doing, a scrapbook themed- album of all her soccer events. This is fun and pretty easy because you can quickly choose all the photos of her playing soccer.

Another great theme for a scrapbook is a trip or vacation. These kinds of albums are fairly simple, because they cover has a specific time frame. Best to do these kinds of scrapbooks soon after the event so that you can remember all the fun memories that go with the photos!

Other scrapbook themes may include a 50th wedding anniversary party, the year of photos in your child's classroom or your grandmother’s favorite recipes... the list is endless!

Most important -- start working on a scrapbook that you have a lot of enthusiasm about! Don't get hung up on it being perfect -- remember the key is to relish your memories and to preserve your stories for future generations. Whatever scrapbook themes you choose, you'll have a keepsake...