Tell your travel story with a scrapbook
Turn your vacation photos into a travel tale
By Paula Jones
Fast forward 10 or 20 years to ask your children what their fondest childhood memories are, and you’ll find that vacations are close to the top of the list.
Like most families, you probably have piles of summer vacation photos from the cottage or the two weeks in Disneyland. You may also have saved memorabilia from these trips — such as brochures, ticket stubs, receipts and postcards — with the intention of doing something with them one day.
Now’s the time to take a few moments to put these items together in a vacation scrapbook. With a little prep work and the simple options available in a photo-editing program, you can relive those memories and enjoy them for generations.
Retrieve, relive and record
Reminisce about your vacation during a family gathering: serve the food you ate, play the music you heard or watch the video you took, and solicit everyone’s help for journaling (textually recapping events). Scrapbooks without journal entries are just photo albums.
To begin scrapbooking crafts, gather your photo files, photo albums or shoebox containing your vacation pictures and souvenirs. Memorabilia are like sensory memory bites — looking at a ticket stub can bring to life the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the event.
Your best memories may not be illustrated by your best photos, but this is the beauty of digital. You can crop and edit out the stranger who started to walk in front of you as the picture was snapped. If your images are not digital, scan them or take them to a photo finisher to be burned onto a CD or DVD. Choose images that tell a story, not the staid “wish you were here” ideals.
If you don’t have photos of places or events, scan postcards or include images from web sites. Once you’ve created your first vacation scrapbook, you’ll find your perspective on taking pictures changes. You’ll know what makes a good scrapbook page — not just the picture of the sandcastle, but also images of its construction, as well as its destruction.
Assign one family member to take notes while everyone reminisces. This way you can share the workload and get different perspectives on events. Print Microsoft Home Magazine’s vacation journaling template to jot down memories now or take it with you on vacation and record events as they happen.
Put the photos together
Organize your photos chronologically and place them together in a folder that you can access in your digital image library. Download one of Microsoft’s vacation photo album templates for Word or Publisher to create quick scrapbook pages. Choose a template from either family-oriented layouts, general or seasonal; then drag and drop your photos into the photo spaces.
Use paper, scissors and glue to match your photos with the text
You can keep your scrapbook in a digital template format or use a more traditional method to combine text, photos and souvenirs on one page. To create this type of album, start by selecting three complementary earth-tone colours of acid-free cardstock. Depending on the size of your project, you’ll need several sheets of each colour.
Rip sheets of cardstock in half and place them on a coordinating coloured background (see photos below). Mat your pictures with the third colour and place on your paper. You can tear backgrounds horizontally, vertically or even on an angle. Interchange your colours for subsequent pages, and add journaling text and any stickers or embellishments you wish.
You can crop and resize photos in your photo-editing software to fit onto your page. Include unusual items, such as a leaf from the botanical gardens or a sealed bag of sand from the beach.
Vacations are an investment in family time. Fun, stress relief and relaxation are the immediate benefits, but by creating a vacation scrapbook, your initial investment grows into a tangible, lasting legacy that can be relived for years and even generations to come.
