Scrapbooking is back in fashion. According to an article I read in the Independent on Sunday last, er, Sunday, obviously, an estimated 2.8 million Brits are scrapbooking, sales of scrapbooking kits are up 600 per cent at Hobbycraft (nope, no idea what’s in a scrapbooking kit either) and Paperchase have started scrapbooking workshops at stores in Glasgow and London.
Back in the day I was big into scrapbooking, filling scrapbooks with those Victorian-style illustrated scraps, before I moved on to making scrapbooks dedicated to my favourite bands, including Duran Duran (pictures of the band with a focus on John Taylor, plus song lyrics, carefully cut out of Smash Hits and Just 17) and, later, a-ha (this one was all about Morten Harket with Pal and Mags making only very occasional appearances).
But then I just kind of stopped, although I have numerous boxes filled with pages torn from magazines and stuff (tickets, business cards, badges, postcards, matchbooks and so on) I’ve collected over the years and on my travels. And in recent years of course my scrapbooking (if you can call it that) has moved online to Instagram and Pinterest. However, always happy to jump on a trend, I’m inspired to start actually cutting and pasting stuff again, starting with a scrapbook of the grown up gap year I took last year. If you’re tempted to try scrapbooking too I’ve discovered some excellent online resources for stylish scrapbooking.
Paperchase has a wide selection of scrapbooks for around tenner, including the world map one above, which is perfect for holiday, honeymoon or gap year memories (you can buy it along with lots of other designs here). Then you’re probably going to want to print off all those images you’ve shared on social media. There are plenty of places you can go to print out Instagram images including Polargram, Printic, Prinstagram, Sticky9 and Origami (and for more ideas of things to do with your Instagram prints check out our feature here).
You could keep things simple and secure your photographs, tickets, business cards and so on in place with double-sided tape or you could get creative with photo corners (Hobbycraft has patterned ones here, Paperchase has some plain Kraft ones here) or washi tape (The Makery in Bath has a great selection here). You could add an extra design element with rubber stamps (again try The Makery here or how about the city inspired stamps from Yellow Owl Workshop, including London, Paris, New York and San Francisco). Then, well you can get as creative as you like, adding patterned paper, fabric, ribbon, stickers, whatever takes your fancy.
Right, I’m off to start my scrapbook. Who else is feeling inspired? Anyone out there already scrapbooking? What do you stick in your scrapbooks? Where do you shop for your scrapbooking bits and bobs? What design elements do you add? And did anyone else make scrapbook tributes to their favourite bands? Please tell me I’m not the only one!
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I am! We have SO many tickets, postcards and other knick-knacks from Japan that I don’t want to throw out. I think we’ll print the pick of our near 800 photos and put a book together to keep everything together. We should do the same with our honeymoon too really…
Scrapbook wise we have a half filled “Adventure Book” a la Pixar’s UP, but I think if we put all our Japan stuff in that it would fill it and we’d have no room for future adventures!
You should definitely do a Japan-specific one then Kitty and keep adding to your Adventure Book with future adventures (love that you do that btw!).
I will take a snap of it Miranda and pop it on Instagram 🙂 Technically it’s my husbands book, as I bought it for him for his birthday but it has photos and things from days out and trips etc
Ooh, can’t wait to see Kitty!
While they are not so much ‘scrap books’ one thing that me and my husband do is make a photobook at the end of each year selecting our favorite pics of the year and having them printed in to a nice hard cover book from a site such as photobox. We started this as we found it so sad that we would do lovely things and take lovely snaps and they would just sit on the computer never being seen again. We also do one for big trips or events (separate ones have been done for our wedding and honeymoon and trip to Vietnam). They do take a while to format and complete but they are so worth it.
It is a shame that we can’t add tickets, restaurant cards and receipts to them though – these tend to end up in our ‘box of sentimental stuff’ and never get looked at so maybe I should scrap book those???
Photobooks are such a great idea but yes, you’re right, it’s a shame you can’t add tickets, menus and so on. Hmm, perhaps you do need to make additional scrapbooks to go alongside your photobooks, or you could put your favourite things in a frame, creating one for every trip?
I’ve seen people do box frames for trip momentos and they look great, or how about this:
http://www.marthastewart.com/966085/travel-keepsake-kits
They could be stored on the bookshelf and look great 🙂
They’re lovely, far nicer than the plain old box files all my travel mementoes are currently being stored in!
I love this. I use photo albums (the ones with the sticky pages) to scrap book. I’ve got some fantastic ones from some big travels I’ve been on and they’re great to look. I also try and do a photo collage of key events, which I put in a picture frame along with memorabilia I’ve picked up, and I hang them in our downstairs loo. There are photos dating back to 1998 and older! and I love looking at them every day.
Oh I do love a photo collage, I really wish I’d taken more photographs when I was younger but getting them printed was such an expense!
I like the sound of this – I used to spend endless hours cutting things out of magazines when I was a teenager – I have a couple of cracking Take That scrapbooks 🙂 I loved doing it – maybe I shall start again 🙂
Yay, finally, someone else who made band scrapbooks! You still have your Take That scrapbooks? Amazing!
We love photobooks and tend to make them for holidays, and we have photos all over the house too. I also keep special cards, tickets, programmes etc. and am very slowly putting them into ‘memory books’ (scrapbooks by any other name). At the moment I have several shoeboxes of stuff waiting to be arranged into books! I don’t do anything too fancy, just get plain books from paperchase or similar, and use a combination of a glue stick and some washi tape, and alphabet stamps to keep track of the months and years. Here’s a wee example: http://instagram.com/p/jPpnkXSI12/?modal=true
I’m afraid I never made band scrapbooks, but I do have some hilariously cringeworthy photo albums from my school years, with handwritten captions …