When are you at your happiest?

Spending time with your family and friends creates lots of happy memories that you’ll naturally want to treasure forever.

But how often have you stored keepsakes, photographs and mementoes in the bottom of a drawer and left them lying there for months?

A great way to capture those once-in-a-lifetime holidays, family gatherings, days out with the children, or travels with friends is to create your own scrapbook. It also gives you the opportunity to put your own unique mark on the design with a touch of artistic flair!

A themed scrapbook is brilliant for preserving memories on a specific topic. Like, for example, your day at the zoo, the weekend at the beach, or that family party! By combining all your photographs, keepsakes and mementoes in one place, you’ll have all of your memories in one complete volume to treasure for years to come.

Creativity is a perfect way to spend time at home as a family – whether this is drawing with the children, making crafty creations on a rainy day or creating your own photo gallery. Nothing beats getting messy with paints, colours and textures, and mixing it up with plenty of imagination and then compiling into one scrapbook…the possibilities are endless. For more craft ideas and inspiration, visit the Fellowes Ideas Centre: Fellowes.com/ideascentre

With the summer holidays fast approaching, there’s no better time to create your own scrapbook, full of your family’s adventures!

So, let’s get started! Here’s a quick guide to creating your own scrapbook:

What you will need

• Lots of memories, mementoes and keepsakes to fill your scrapbook!
• Scrapbook embellishments
• Sheets of lightweight card in the colours of your choice
• A laminator
• Laminating pouches
• A trimmer with different craft blades
• A binder
• Binding combs and covers

 

1. Decide upon a theme

Think about the theme for your scrapbook, what do you want it to be about? Having a theme for your content will help you plan the pages you want to create and give you an idea of what you want to include, such as concert tickets, embellishments, children’s drawings.

Your theme can be anything that you want, from travel to family parties, weddings, graduation, baby’s first year and many, many more.

2. Prepare!

Select the photographs, drawings, mementoes and keepsakes that you would like to include to showcase those memories in your scrapbook. Let your imagination run wild and creatively arrange your content to fit in with your theme, this will give the overall look and feel of your scrapbook.

Planning at this stage will save time later – you will have a good idea of where everything should go before you start trimming and putting everything together.

3. Put everything together

Once you have prepared and arranged your pages, you’re ready to put your scrapbook together!

• Trim – The quickest and most precise way to trim your paper or photos is to use a trimmer. You can be creative with this by using different craft blades such as wavy, perforated and folded.
• Laminate – Once you’re happy with your page layouts, you can laminate. Laminating your pages will preserve and protect your photos and keepsakes, enhance the colours and images, as well as creating durable, water-resistant pages.
• Bind – Collate your pages into the order you would like them to appear in your scrapbook and bind them!

Then sit back and admire it! 

To discover many more craft and laminating ideas visit: Fellowes.com/ideascentre, and to share your creative ideas visit facebook.com/fellowesuk