Scrapbooks can help document your year

Many interesting and special events take place during the course of a typical year. While the trend is to share photos and anecdotes via social media, these memories tend to be forgotten soon after they are posted. Rather than relegate birthdays, holidays, school milestones, and other such yearly events to the black hole of cyberspace, crafty men, women and children may want to display them in more prominent ways.

Scrapbooking is a popular hobby that can help people document various events over the course of the year. But scrapbooking can be much more than that as well. Scrapbooks can serve as valuable resources that speak to the way life once was.

For those who have resolved to devote more time to documenting happy times and special events in the year ahead, scrapbooking is a great way to do just that. Here’s how to make the process creative and successful.

• Devote a box to “scraps.” At the beginning of the year, set aside a medium-sized box, such as a shoebox, that can store various items you want to include in your scrapbook.These may include ticket stubs, receipts, brochures from trips, or any other items you deem worth saving.

• Make time to scrapbook. Set aside a few days each month to go through collected items and organize them so you have an idea of what will be included on your pages. Every event may not make the final cut, but that’s up to you.

• Indulge in some craft-store shopping. Not everyone has the time to design each scrapbook page from scratch. Fortunately, there are numerous pre-designed templates or slip-in pages that require little work on the part of scrapbookers.

• Use your own handwriting. Handwritten sentiments can make the scrapbook even more meaningful.

• Don’t overload with photos. Let one or two photos on a page best convey the emotions and stories. Create balance with white space, text and other accents.

• Categorize your photos. Disorganized photos can make scrapbook creation more challenging and ultimately frustrating. Organize your photos by month and rely on cloud-based photo storage systems to keep them safe. Then, when you need them, you can print only those images you want to include in your book.