Welcome to ScrapTown! Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with good scrapbooking ideas, whether you have become burned out because you have been doing it so much or because you consider yourself one of the less artistically-minded creative people on this earth. This site is aimed at helping you find the best ideas there are for scrapbooking, so whether you are just starting at becoming a scrapbooking hobbyist or are experienced and are interested in finding new and interesting ways to hone your skills with the craft, look no further.

We have tons of scrapbooking ideas, tips, and techniques that will make your scrapbooks shine and allow you to provide lasting memories of your family and friends to share for years to come. It’s an art form that allows you to express yourself fully while reminiscing about your past and coming up with interesting ways to show your experiences and lifetime achievements with others.

The art of memory preservation is one that challenges you to let your creativity flow, and put your most nostalgic side on display. This can seem like a tall order, especially for those of us who are more technically-minded - the kinds of people who would study toward a Bachelor of Science in school rather than a Bachelor of Arts. Please feel free to review the different sections of this site for the topics presented here, and make comments, add suggestions, or submit your own helpful scrapbooking tips for others to use!

You may be interested in simple scrapbooking ideas or complex ones, but either way you can be sure that this website contains our best ideas for all scrapbooking ideas, activities and varieties. It’ll be much easier for you to get a start in scrapbooking or continue where you left off if you read the information on this and other online destinations.

Every human being has a part of the brain dedicated to memories - a storage room for recalling facts, events, and feelings we have learned and experienced in the past. It is the way we retain information and gain knowledge, both about who we are and about the world around us. Essentially, scrapbooking is a way of preserving certain memories using a visual representation of moments we want to remember from our past.

Keeping visual elements of our past is important because as our short term memory shifts into long term memory, we sometimes lose many of the sensory details of those events, as our minds only tend to store the most pertinent and relevant information as time goes by. Our minds are therefore like a somewhat leaky sieve in that they can hold a lot of information for a long period of time, but much of the information that is “closest to the edge” slowly drains away.

If you want to create the most valuable scrapbook memories that you possibly can, it may help you in your design phase to try recalling some of the sensory details that you remember from whichever event you are scrapping about. For instance, a family day at the park - the picnic you had, what you ate, the way the freshly cut grass smelled, the feel of the cool breeze, the temperature outside. This is a basic example, but what I’m trying to get at here is that the more you remember while you are scrapping about your past, the more you’ll be able to include in your write-ups and therefore the more complete your scrapbook memories will end up being.

Use these techniques to help you create great scrapbook layouts and pages. Make a list of the first five things that come to your mind about the event or person(s) you are scrapping for. Next, make a list of the five most important things to you about that event or person, ie. the way they made you feel, etc. Combining those ten things, you might just have an easier time coming up with new and more fantastic scrapbooking ideas for your future projects.

The following scrapbooking ideas are meant to provide some inspiration and get you out of the “same-old, same-old” mentality that you might have gotten yourself into a rut with over time by scrapping the same events each year. I hope they get you on track toward a new phase in your scrapping!

1. The Birth of a Child
It doesn’t have to be your own; a grandchild, niece or nephew, godchild, or a close friend’s newborn can be a great subject for a scrapbook or page. Especially if it isn’t your own child, this can make a great gift for the proud new parents.

2. A New Home
You may be at your first home buying stage and wish to document or share the experience with others. Even if you don’t like the look of your home at first and want to make a lot of changes before you show it off to anyone, still take photos and get a good collection of images of how the place looks right when you buy it, before you have set your hand to the plow and made it into the home of your dreams.

These photos can serve as comparisons for your own benefit after the work is done, and they will also add a special touch to your home scrapbook pages so that your family and friends can see how far you’ve come with the place.

3. Weddings
What better present to give a bride and groom than a beautifully decorated and embellished scrapbook full of your best scrapbooking ideas? Yes, some people end up scrapping their own weddings, but in the hectic rush of starting a new life together, newlyweds may not have the time or desire to scrapbook right away and so their personal projects may get pushed to the back burner. Help them out by creating a couple of tasteful scrapbook pages for them and they’ll think of not only their wedding, but also you, whenever they look at them!

4. Minor Holidays
There are of course the standard birthday, vacation, and Christmas scrapbooking ideas, but most everyone who has been scrapping for awhile has done one or many of these. What about the less “extravagant” holidays that might not be as memorable? Cherish these memories of time spent with your loved ones by scrapbooking smaller events, which are no less special than the big ones! A day trip or road trip you took over the summer, a Memorial Day cookout, or a day stranded inside the house during a winter blizzard can all make great subjects for scrapbook pages about fun times that you may have otherwise forgotten about.

For a lot of scrappers, our busy day-to-day lives can often get in the way of our progress. By that I mean we’re so preoccupied running around in circles that we lose sight of our goals, and we end up having to prioritize and re-prioritize over and over again.

This in and of itself is not a bad thing, and in fact a little house cleaning that gets our heads clear and keeps our focus right can be a very useful tool for getting things done. Part of life’s blessing is the freedom to do that - to stop and self-analyze for a moment - to begin with. But often you may find yourself in a slump, not being able to get things done even when you feel like you’re trying your hardest.

I’ll admit I’m not the most flawless person in the world when it comes to making the best and most efficient use of my time; I fall prey to the occasional episode of american idol just like anyone else

It’s at the intersection of inspiration and timing that some of my best scrapbooking ideas have been brought to life. Often I’m inspired but have no free time to get into the right setting and mode for scrapbooking; other times I find I’m wondering what to do with myself and yet I feel unmotivated toward getting anything done.

Next time you run into either of these extremes, take a second to think about what inspires you. What stresses you out? Chances are that a combination of these factors have to do with whether you find yourself in the right frame of mind to let your creative juices flow. A little reflection can go a long way toward opening up the right channels for you to be at your best creatively and productively. This doesn’t just apply to scrapping or scrapbooking ideas, but to everything else you find yourself tasked with as well.