A graduation theme is perfect for scrapbooking. This kind of scrapbook could be started years before the graduation or just a few months ahead of the event. As an ongoing project, it could be something you use to record all the school years’ memories. You could do this on your own, or you could enlist the help of your son or daughter and involve them in the creative process. Your scrapbook could be created as a traditional scrapbook or you could make a digital scrapbook.

These are the kinds of middle school or high shool memories that you’ll want to look back on. Keeping a record of achievements, trials and other passages through school years makes an album your child will treasure.

Scrapbook paper with a graduation theme can be used. A variety of images can be used by printing out pictures, illustrations or clip art. It’s essential that you use the best, archival safe or photo safe glue or adhesives to prevent damage to your scrapbook’s contents.

Addition of your child’s hobbies, clubs, scouting information, special awards, favorite sports, favorite foods or other personal details is a good start. Copies of achievement certificates and report cards are useful items to add. Photos, notes or any other memorabilia from friends and family would be nice to add. Those hopes and dreams you have never shared with your child could be included as personal, handwritten notes. Scans of many of these items would work well if you are going to make a digital scrapbook.

Other graduation scrapbook ideas: Give each yearly school photo it’s own page. School events or prom night mementos. Develop the theme further with the use of graduation stickers. Dedicate a page for each year, such as: freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. For accents and interest on the page layouts, use die cuts. Die cuts are shapes and pictures made of paper or chipboard that can be glued into a scrapbook. These can be bought at art, craft and scrapbook supply stores.)

You can also leave room for candid photos of the graduation ceremony, parties, or events held before the graduation. Keep room in the scrapbook for any invitations to the graduation ceremony or announcements about the event. Descriptions and notes can be handwritten as captions under photos and pictures.

Pick out a nice binder or scrapbook album to keep the graduation scrapbook pages in. Report cards, awards, school photos and/or certificates will need to fit in your album; be sure to buy one big enough. 

After graduation, when the diploma arrives, you might include a copy of it in the album. Planning and saving items for your scrapbook done over a period of time, but these memories are worth the time and trouble. A memory book filled with personal remembrances and mementos makes a wonderful graduation present. And those memories are the kind you want to keep and share forever.  

The whole world has gone digital. Everything from pictures to songs have gone digital so that anyone can have them at a moment’s notice. Digital scrapbooking is now the way to go if you want to eliminate those scrapbook albums. It is a great way to share your pictures and designs with friends and family across the globe. If you are not sure what a digital scrapbook is or how to put one together, then you are in the right spot.

Step one for digital scrapbooking is gathering your pictures together. You can upload them to your computer through a digital camera or a high definition scanner. Another great way to start your digital scrapbook is by having them loaded onto a compact disc at your local photo lab. You simply take your memory disc into the lab and they put the pictures onto a compact disc that can hold hundreds and hundreds of pictures.

Next on the agenda is finding the right photo editing software. This will allow you to digitally alter your photographs and enhance some of the features. Once you have done this it will be time to look at scrapbook ideas to create your digital scrapbook. Just as with traditional scrapbooking, you are going to need scrapbook pages to put your photos on. There are great templates on the internet and you can go to www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com for some wonderful ideas.

Once you have either purchased or gotten the layout pages for free, it is time to assemble your album. Take your time and have fun playing with the embellishments and stickers that can be found on free websites. There is plenty of free stuff out there if you take the time to do a simple web search. The final step for your digital scrapbook is to share it with your friends and family. You can make a compact disc, post it on a webpage or even print out the final product for your loved ones to see.

Digital scrapbooking will make you forget about the old fashioned way of doing things. Sure, you can print out the pages but it will not have the versatility or portability that a digital scrapbook has over its paper cousin. The best part of a digital scrapbook is that you can email it to friends and family no matter where they are. All they need is a computer and an email address.

Using custom layouts for pages in a computer scrapbook will make it more interesting. Basic scrapbook page designs consist of photos arranged on top of a background (color or texture). Doing some digital photo editing is essential to create more options of images to use in your scrapbooks. More interesting pages include graphic elements such as:

• Titles in varied font styles
• Names, dates or text on the page in different colors and font weights and styles
• Photos arranged in montages
• Journaling on the page using a font that looks like handwriting
• Clip art graphics to interesting elements on the page layouts
• Digitally created special effects such as torn paper, shadows or glows around elements
• Frames or borders around photos
• Layering of backgrounds to simulate the look of layers of paper

You can see how getting better skills with photo editing software and learning new computer scrapbooking techniques is essential for all of this.

Some of the ideas above are also used in traditional scrapbooks Photo editing and “special effects” will give scrapbooks an entirely new “look and feel”. Special effect such as shadows and highlights can add interest if they are done correctly.

Layouts using a theme can be very effective to create more uniqueness to the look of your page layouts. Holiday, vacations, birthday and events such as these make good themes to use. The great thing about themes is they provide a variety of designs and images to add along with photos.

A Scanner is a Computer Scrapper’s Friend

Using your scanner and then photo editing your scans is a great method to acquire custom elements for your pages and layouts. Make a library of scanned images to use in digital scrapbooks by scannig pictures and other materials you have. An example: You may try to scan colored pencils (though you may need photo edit scans of the things that were not flat) and use scans of other school supplies, paper, rulers, etc.

To get some patterns to use as backgrounds, try scanning holiday wrapping paper. Images or drawings on birthday, holiday and other greeting cards can be used. If you do scan something with a copyright, just be warned – you may only used those images for your own scrapbook and not for something you want to sell. You can imitate the way ribbon looks in a scrapbok by scanning ribbon and photo editing it for use in a layout.

Another technique is to get traditional scrapbook products such as chipboard letters and scan those. Use the scanned letters as titles in your layouts and alter the colors with your photo editing software.

There are also affordable clip art galleries and photo and clip art CDs available with images for themed scrapbooks. Digital kits for computer scrapbooks can be bought online or downloaded for free. Modify or photo edit images such as textures, patterned paper, tags and other elements for use in your computer scrapbook.

Make a Hybrid Scrapbook

Just because it’s a digital scrapbook doesn’t mean you can’t do some hand writing, drawing or add other embellishments on the pages after they have been printed. A combination of traditional scrapbooking elements, paper, tags, etc. and digital or computer scrapbooking is caled hybrid scrapbooking. With hybrid scrapbooking you can make your computer scrapbooks even more unique, creative and interesting.