Try to use the next scrapbook ideas for fun scrapbooking. When I went to one place for vacation two months ago, I already had my scrapbook pages planned before I got home. I knew I wanted to buy some postcards of my trip, but I ended up buying around 30-40 of them! I wanted to show my postcards in my scrapbook, but not on separate pages. Instead, I used the mosaic scrapbook ideas, and placed several postcards on one page. It was a great space-saver as well as a fun way to display the postcards.

While enjoying my niece's birthday party at Club Disney, I came up with a great lettering scrapbook ideas for my future layout about the event. On one wall was written "Happy Birthday"-the letters were a series of holes lit from behind. I knew the look was perfect for my birthday pages! To re-create the letters, I wrote the title in pencil on purple cardstock. Then I turned my Family Treasures mini-extension, 1/16" circle punch upside down and positioned the hole over my pencil line. Next, I just punched holes along the lines to create the letters. As a final touch, I mounted the title on white cardstock to make the letters stand out. This fun "marquee sign" look can also be used with metallic or glittery papers. It's perfect for a title about a night on the town or a trip to New York!

When my son was born, a co-worker offered to babysit him for me because she decided to stay home with her son as well. And she presented me with a wonderful scrapbook of the entire year with my son at her home. She journalized his development and took pictures of him as well. She has done this for me every year since and I look forward to her gift every Christmas. Not only does this give me a wonderful keepsake, it also helps me to see what I may be missing while working.

Here are scrapbook ideas to display your child's handprints and footprints. Turn these precious prints into the body and wings of an angel. First, prepare a surface for the angel (such as a scrapbook page, album cover, apron or wall hanging). I used a scrapbook binder, so I painted the background first. Next, put white craft paint on a paper plate and have your child place his or her hands in the paint one at a time. (Try not to get excessive paint on your child's hand because it will pool on your project. It's helpful to practice on a piece of paper first.)Have your child apply the right hand print for the right wing, and the left hand print for the left wing. When the wings are dry, have your child dip his or her foot onto a paper plate with soft-colored paint. Press the foot down at the center of the wings, with the heel at the top. When the body has dried, paint a round circle for the angel face and embellish it with details, including hair. You can also outline the body to make a long "robe," adding scallops and dots for a feminine angel or a collar and angular lines for a masculine angel. Be sure to keep your embellishments simple so they don't overpower the prints. Finally, top your angel with a halo and add background embellishments if desired. Remember to put a name and date on your masterpiece!

Something I like to do to help decide on a color to use on my scrapbook page is to close my eyes for a few seconds and then open them again looking at my page. Then I ask myself "What is the first thing I saw?" If it was the paper or embellishments etc I know I need to make a change. If it is the photo then I know it is a good color choice.

In order to stay motivated to scrapbook, I rely on two things: my scrapbook journal and artistic and creative publications. Like any other arts and crafts related activity, one needs a boost now and then to keep going.
My scrapbook journal is one way I stay motivated to scrapbook. I bought a beautiful woman's day book just for recording my scrapbook experiences and ideas. In it, I record pages completed, new techniques attempted, and quotes from my children or anything I want to include in a future page. An added bonus: the daybook includes preprinted quotes on every page! Another helpful task is by checking out art and creativity publications from my local library. I have garnered much useful information from art magazines concerning creativity boosters and design tips. Of course, I also rely heavily on all of my magazines!

My favorite scrapbooking tips follow three basic criteria: cheap, easy, quick. This is one that I like to do: If you want to include your child's favorite characters in their scrapbook, but are having a hard time finding products, look to their books. You can scan, print, and cut out, or, for a more artistic look, place vellum over a page in their book (or cover to a favorite movie) and trace, leaving out any unwanted elements. You can color it in, or leave it as a pencil drawing. You can even make small changes (ie, putting a character's arm around a silhouetted photo of your child) very easily. I like doing this because it personalizes the pages, and it requires no artistic talent.

My children love scrapbooking. Great for rainy and sick days! We keep a large container full of stuff for them when they need it "this also teaches them to recycle rather than discard" Things we have put in it. Discarded magazines, stickers, ribbons, buttons, wrapping paper, crayons, string, yarn, writing items, shoelaces, junk mail flyers with pictures, material scraps, construction paper, safe children scissors, glue sticks.. Always something being added and it all gets used! My children sometimes scrapbook without photos so I don't mind if the things are acid/lignon free or not. It is just for hours of fun!

Help the person celebrating a birthday feel like a star for a day by setting out completed scrapbook pages and/or albums about them at the celebration. Everyone will gain a better appreciation for the unique person that they are and the birthday person will feel even more special!

Every year I take my kids school pictures and create a layout in which I create a special page that shows their change year to year. I use the school picture on one page and on the facing page I take paint and have them press their hand and foot on the page, I also "journal" 10 questions (the same ones each year) and have the kids write the answers down. It's a really neat way to show how much difference just one year makes. So use these scrapbook ideas.

Here are scrapbook ideas for fun scrapbooking. Often we have tons of less than perfect pictures, like the one of your child crying that you took right before you got the great one of her smiling happily for the camera. An ABC album is a great way to use those pictures as long as you're creative with your captions. Consider adding captions like "grumpy girl", "squirmy", and "entranced" to the appropriate pages. You'll be surprised how many pictures you have for an album when you look at pictures that weren't "worthy" of other pages.

I scan my children's drawings or paintings into my computer and print them onto acid free cardstock. Then I crop them and mat them and they look like little paintings! I then use them throughout my Albums to add color and preserve and show how their skills are progressing. Sometimes instead of scanning the art I just crop and matt the original work and just ensure that it doesn't touch any photos.

For those binders that have the insert-slip covers, here's a great cover tip. First, if there are rivets on the back cover use exact knife to cut the clear plastic, so that your cover page will cover them up. Use three 12X12 pieces of paper, cut 2 pages down to 11.75 in. wide by 11.25 in. high, use the third piece to make one strip 11.25 in high and 8.5 cm wide. The left over paper is enough to make an 8.5 X 11 sheet. Insert sheets into the cover and ta-da, easy custom album cover.

I fill my albums as full as possible and so I usually end up expanding them farther than their spine covers will go. To give my albums a finished look when they are on display I make my own spines covers for them. First I choose a paper that coordinates with my album. I then add the information to it that I want to see displayed on the spine of the album and embellish the paper to complete the look. Then I trim it down to a size just a bit bigger than I expect it needs to be, just to be safe, and laminate it with my Xyron. All that is left to do is to trim it to fit the album, punch holes aligned with the posts, and insert it into the album where the old spine cover was. This give a durable, informational, and beautiful touch to the album.

You can achieve really neat 3-D effects by simply cutting a silhoutte of your subject and saving the background. Tape your background down and then put a pop-up dot on your silhoutte. Magically you have an awesome 3-D picture. Try it with some posed sports shots i.e. boy looking like he is fixing to catch a ball or run.

You know how hospital's give you your baby's footprints in ink? Well, I take a Versamark Pad (watermark ink pad), ink up my baby's feet (even child's hand) and press it down on colored cardstock. Soon their image will appear and clean up is a quick wipe with no mess! Makes a great Thank You card, Birth Announcement or keepsake card. (don't do too many....baby won't like that).

Recently, I had a baby shower for gal. I got a small memory book, baby stickers, and my camera. Each guest wrote a short note, advise and best wishes and embellished with stickers. On each opposing page I attached that guest's picture and a space for gift description. I also added a few pictures of gift opening, cake, etc. She loved it so much she wants to take it to all her showers. I pre-embellish the remaining pages and added journaling boxes to the facing pages. She isn't a scrapper so this way she won't have to purchase anything and just might spark her to start scrapbooking her new bundle of joy and fun scrapbook ideas.

A fun way for children to send a personalized birthday thank you card is to create a page layout. I select 3 or 4 photos from the event, mat and mount them on a page in fun, theme colors, mat & mount a journaling box (with lines), then color copy as many pages as I need. My daughter can then write a personalized note in the journaling box and each of her guests receives a special momento of the party in the mail!

I appreciate ideas that help me add a homemade touch to my layouts. I mix water and cardstock in a blender, then squeeze the excess water from the paper. Next, I press the mixture into candy mold trays and allow it to dry overnight. The thickness of the shape depends on how much paper pulp I add to the mold. I use glue dots to attach the shapes to my layouts. The shapes have a great texture and are easy to work with. For even more variety, I create my own shades by using colored cardstock and adding chalks. I've used a variety of candy and soap molds, available at most craft stores, and I love the look!

For Christmas this year I purchased double (hinged) 5x7 frames. I put my daughter's Christmas picture in one side and made a 5x7 scrapbook page to put in the other side. Each year I will give my relatives a new picture and page to replace in the frame. The previous year's set can then be put into a scrapbook so that they will have a collection as she grows.

I was putting together a scrapbook page for my daughter's first lost tooth. She came along to see what I was doing just as I started working on the title. This gave me an idea--why can't she print her own title? She printed "I Lost My Tooth". The result was so personal, and it will be neat for her to look back to see her printing at that age.

Once I select the photos I'm using for my layouts, I go ahead and crop my extras (leftovers) into different size squares (I try to crop them into the smallest size possible). Then I put them away by size. Later, when I come to the end of my album, I make tile collages with all my leftovers. That way I don't need a place to store them. I also don't have to trash them.
So, try to use these fun scrapbook ideas.

Let me introduce another part of themed scrapbook ideas. So go on!
I like using my son's baby blankets or baby clothes that I just didn't want to get rid of to cover my scrapbooking albums. I just iron the material out flat, and use a glue gun to adhere to the album like you would do a book cover. It's another memory that gets incorporated into your albums.

While organizing my photos I came across duplicate school pictures of not only my children but of my husband and myself as well. I had already done a school album for our children so I was at a loss as to what to do with these extras. It occured to me that when the kids leave they will take those albums with them, so I decided to make an album that compares all of us at each grade level. One on page you will find myself on the next my son at the same age. The kids really get a kick out of seeing Mommy and Daddy in Kindergarden right along side of them!

Scrapbook ideas: Roles of your life.
I recently did a mini album for my mother-in-law on her birthday of the roles she has taken throughout her life, such as wife, mother, daughter and so forth. For each role I expressed a few things about what she brought to that role and what I felt as her daughter-in-law experiencing the love and grace she brought to each of these roles.

Love Scrapbook ideas.
After Valentine's Day, I thought it would be especially nice if I made two 5 x 7 scrapbooks of me and my sweetheart. I plan to include the story of how we met (from both sides!), "10 things we love about..." lists, and highlights of both our memorable events and 'ordinary' activities like cooking, cleaning, going to movies, etc. The scrapbooks will be identical—one for me, and one for my sweetheart. As our relationship develops and grows, we can add more pages. The downside to this idea is that you have to buy doubles of everything!!!

Annual anniversary scrapbook.
Before my now-husband and I were dating, he had given me a beautiful photo album, just as a surprise little gift for me. When we got married three years later, I decided to turn the album into a record of our marriage, one anniversary at a time.
On the front page, I put a picture of us on our wedding day. I included just a few basic journaling elements - favorite memories, etc. Then on our one-year anniversary, we took another picture and put it on the second page. Next years will be our anniversary, so we'll fill in the next page, and so on... By the time the album's 40 pages are filled up, we'll have a wonderful progressive journal of our marriage!

Baby scrapbook
Recently, while looking through baby books to purchase for my sister's upcoming babies, I was discouraged. I began to make my own baby books with all of the needed/wanted pages and sections. I took ideas from older baby books (they tend to be better) as well as pregnancy journals and put them all in one. They have a section on how parents met, pre-birth, birth, post birth up through school years, leaving room for photos and journal pages for parents. I've now made two and have my sister-in-law making one for a friend of hers. We start with a white covered book and decoupage the outside, then the inside is all scrapbooking except without the photos. Once the book is completed I give it with several color pens and some scrapbooking glue. They look great, and are a very special gift!

Baby’s first days scrapbook ideas
When my son was born last fall, I knew there would be a lot of pictures taken of him during his first days. To jump start my scrapbooking, I took an album to the hospital with me, and asked all visitors, family and close friends, to sign one page of the album and write a message to my son. My husband and I added our own. I also asked visitors to our home over the first few weeks to add a message. I framed photos of each person holding my son on their page, and put greeting cards on the back of the page. There were several advantages to doing it this way! Journaling was easy, and he also has his loved ones' handwriting recorded. My son has a fun record of his family and friends. I'll definitely do this with my second!

Baby’s first scrapbook
With my daughter's first birthday quickly approaching, I dedicated an entire 6x8 album to her familly. I asked each person some personal questions (favorite ice cream, color, hobby, etc.) I am compiling it for her birthday. This way we are learning all about her extended family, colors, and some fun facts about each person! I have also decorated each page with something special about each of them.

Birthday scrapbook ideas
I have a girlfriend that loves scrapbooks, but doesn't ever do any. She thinks that she doesn't have any good ideas. So for a baby shower gift to her, I created a birthday book. It was a simple 5x7 album and on each page I decorated it so she could add a picture of her son at each of his birthdays starting with a hospital picture all the way until he is 18 years old. I put a square in the top left corner of each page with the number of years old he would be (example: 1,2 or 3 etc.), put a triangle in the bottom right corner and added a few stickers of party hats or confetti. Now all she has to do is add his picture and she will have a scrapbook that she can enjoy.

Birthday party scrapbook ideas
I love hosting parties and I love taking pictures but we all know how difficult it is to be the hostess and the photographer. Each time I attend a special party I take my camera and snap photos of everything I can- guests, gifts (wrapped and opened), food, decorations, and of course the guest of honor. (It's fun to use "their" balloons instead of balloon stickers.) I develop the photos then arrange them into a small 5x7 book and give it to that person. This is a nice way to add to their memories without overwhelming them with more photos to scrapbook. (I always present them with the negatives incase I captured a moment they would like to add to their scrapbook.) My most appreciative friends were mom's whose children had a birthday party. For these books I also added simple text to the bottom of each page which turned it into their very own picture book. (I hope I receive one for my daughter's upcoming birthday party!)

Blackmail scrapbook
Embrace your bad photos!! I took a small square template and cut all of my bad photos (bad hair, weird looks etc.) and arranged them on black cardstock in a black album, affectionately known as the "blackmail album". Every so often, we look through it and have a really good laugh!
I hope these scrapbook ideas will help you to have an easy scrapbooking!

Looking for a new scrapbook ideas? Use these themed scrapbook ideas to create a wonderful scrapbooking projects.

"A Year In The Life" scrapbook as a gift.

Last year I made my best friend a small album with something for every month during the year. We travel together a lot, so I had a photo of her on several trips we took during the year. I snapped her beside the new car she bought in August. In March, I had a photo of her looking hale and hearty after recuperating from surgery. In April, when I wasn't able to get a picture of her, I included a photo of her great-nephew and -niece, whom she adores. The last photo was at her home during Christmas-time, showing holiday decorations in the background. I put borders on one last page, and gave her a sticker set of a small Christmas tree and decorations, which she put in the album herself. She also added notes about what we had for dinner at our traditional gift-exchange get-together, and the other gifts I gave her. It was a real challenge making sure I got something (almost) every month, without giving away why my camera was pointed in her direction so often!

"Tips For A Good Marriage" scrapbook.

The reception is a good time to gather material for scrapping into a surprise wedding book for the newlyweds. The bride and groom are often so busy, they won't notice.
During the reception, have a family friend or relative not involved in the wedding party collect materials.
Arm them with a notepad, blank squares and rectangles of scrapbook paper, acid-free pens, and a camera with a flash, and assign them to visit each table during the course of the reception.
Have "The Collector" and tell the guests that we are secretly collecting materials for a scrapbook for the newlyweds. Ask each couple or family to write down a tip for making a good marriage on one of the scraps and sign it. Then take their photo. Write the name of the guests in the notepad with the frame number of the film for easy identification later.
Match the photos with the tips onto scrapbook pages and title "Tips for a Good Marriage".
This works well at small weddings, but may be difficult at large events.

Song scrapbook.

My two children like to sing their favorite songs before bedtime. So, I decided to make an album with their favorite songs in them. On one page I put a picture that relates to the song and opposite that page is the verse of the song in my handwriting. My children just love it.

50 States.

Travel is a big deal in our family and we are excited to say that we have been all over. To commemorate our daughter's travels, I have started a 50 States and Beyond theme album that has one page per state and one page for Washington, D.C. The last page is reserved for "Beyond" (trips out of the country). She is now 14 months old and has visited 14 states and lived in 3! I keep the pages the same for the most part: a black background, state titles, bright matting and a state diecut if I can find it. I include a couple of facts about the state, a note and picture of her on her first visit to the state and plenty of space to write in her future visits. I hope she will keep this book up throughout her lifetime and continue to work to fill any pages that we don't finish before she leaves home.

A Disney Scrapbook With Character.

Instead of using the same Disney style scrapbooking as I had done in previous Disney albums I decided to try something new. I called the album "Finding Character in the Characters" For each Disney Character that I had pictures of with my children I went through a Character Quality book and found a Quality which I felt best fit with each one. For example: Mickey Mouse - Joyfulness; Pluto - Loyalty etc. Each page had the regular Disney style scrapbooking and included a title with the Character's name, character quality and the definition for that quality. It's been a great learning tool for my children and myself, helping us realize that everyone has character qualities. It's also nice to know that my kids are learning valuable information when they look through this scrapbook! Great Scrapbook Idea!

A Musical Scrapbook.

I was challenged to put together an album for my mother-in-law's retirement in a very short period of time. Her main work was as a wife and mother for most of her adult life with a career after her kids were older, so I wanted to work in her family. I did a time line with each place she worked, a layout of the place she retired from and then a page for each family member. To tie the album together, I printed the words to an appropriate Christian song. Then I recorded a CD to send along with the album. Now when she listens to the CD in her car, she can relive her scrapbook and all the people who love her again and again.

ABC Bible Verses.

I created an ABC album for my daughter using Bible verses. I used an 8 1/2 X 11 album and used two facing pages for each letter. I cut out a large letter for each and decorated the pages with at least on picture that was related and several smaller pictures, stickers, die cuts, etc. But on each page I also added on child like Bible verse (such as "Honor your father and your mother.") that started with the letter. She loves to look through and identify the pictures but she is also starting to memorize the verses at only 3 years old.

ABC Scrapbook.

I love doing theme scrapbooks and have made an effort to do one book for every niece and nephew I have. The scrapbook I did for my youngest niece was an ABC book. I literally went through the alphabet and created pages that corresponded with the letter of the alphabet. Ex: A for Aunties Angel, B for Big Brothers, C for cousins, etc. I also made every page to incorporate the pictures to relate to my niece who the book was about. Not only is it a great book to show her growing up, but it teaches her the alphabet at the same time. I made my scrapbook 12x12, but this would be perfect for 8 1/2 x11 or a special book of 5x7.

ABC'S Of Our 1st Home.

My husband and I moved into our first home two years ago. We took many pictures throughout the first year, including about 100 pictures of him finishing our basement into a rec room. Instead of putting the pictures into an album chronologically, I made an ABC scrapbook of our first year in our first home. Here's the way my letters came out - some of them more personal to us and our life, but all are worth sharing.
A - Aquarium (we built an aquarium into the basement wall), B - Basement, BBQ, Bandit (one of the dogs we adopted soon after we moved in), C - Ceiling construction, D - Disney World (our vacation that year), E - Electrical work, F - First home pictures, G - Garden, H - Holidays, I - Irises and Inside the house, J - 4th of July (the day we moved in), L - London (a work trip I took), M - Moving Day, N - Nags Head (a short trip we took), O - Our street, Our neighborhood, Our town, P - Puppies, Q - Quiet time, R - Remodeling, S - Soccer (I played that Spring), T - Tools, U - Under Construction, V - Virginia Tech (went to the Sugar Bowl that year), W - Walls and Wallpaper, X - Xtra playful in the snow (puppies), Z - Z- End of our first year.

Use your imagination and these themed scrapbook ideas to create great and unique story of your life.

Here are a few scrapbook ideas about cropping. Scrapbooking is an industry that is booming with magazines, idea books, etc. Many scrapbookers find themselves wondering what to do with all of them. Should you keep them all intact or should you cut them up? That is the question. After spending all the money on subscriptions and idea books, wouldn't you like to get the most out of your money and find a way to make the most of all those piles of magazines? After all, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips, but if your idea books are scattered all over your house or piling up a stacks, how can you use them effectively?

Three camps emerge when this discussion comes up: those who believes you should keep them intact, those who cut them up and file them away, and the third camp (where my office seems to be at the moment) those who pile them up, because they had to have it, but haven't found time to read it or do anything with it.

Camp Keep Them Intact

The first camp is the purist camp and likes to keep their magazines intact. There are many reasons for doing this. Perhaps they like all the complete magazines all lined up or perhaps they feel that their tastes might change over time.

So, if you decide Camp Keep Them Intact is for you, well then, how do you find all the neat ideas that you have seen in the magazines over the years? There are about as many methods to organize as there are magazines out there.

ORGANIZE: First gather all your magazines by title and then sort them into years by the publication. Place them into magazine holders. I can usually fit 10 issues or so in one holder. You could then make labels for each magazine on the front of the holder for quick viewing.

What about annual magazines/books and miscellaneous idea books? Those can be further grouped together. For example, I usually put all my Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fames together. You could also put all your idea books by author together in one holder.

Many of the magazines even offer cool binders that you can hook all your complete magazines into that show their logo and the year or publication. Or, if you like the look of binders over magazine holders, there are many places (like Wall-Mart and office supply stores) that carry plastic magazine hooks that you place through the center of your magazine that are three ring punched for you to store whole magazines in binders.

CATEGORIZE: So, now you have them all organized into magazine holders, but how do you find that adorable Valentine's spread you saw months ago with the cool tag? Here are a few methods:

POST-IT METHOD: Purchase those small flag Post-Its in bright colors and flag pages in your magazine with layouts you want to return to while you're reading it. I like to additionally jot a small identifying note on the flag so I can glance across the top of the magazine for what I want. Since the little flags come in many colors, you could go so far as to assign each color a generic theme, such as tags being green, techniques being red, photo ideas being yellow, and lettering are purple. Then when you went back for the Valentine's spread with a cute tag idea you could glance over all the green Post-Its.

INDEX METHOD: Another method is to create a list of layouts, articles, techniques within the magazine you want to refer to later as you read along and write the page number down on a piece of paper with a title and maybe a short description. Then either clip it to the front of that issue or inside the cover of the magazine. You could also make these notations in a notebook designated just for this purpose. Magazines also offer end of the year indexes which you could place with your lists to have a more extensive index of where things are in the magazines. You could make indexes by magazine title in your notebook, or you could make categories and jot down all the layouts/articles you see that fit into those categories into your notebooks as you read the magazine.

CAMP CUT IT UP

Then there is the camp that cuts their magazines up. The reason for this is usually a space issue. If you decide this is the camp for you, as your magazines are taking up more square footage than your scrap space, then the first thing you need to decide is how you are going to store all your cut up pages. Will you place them in plastic sleeves in folders, glue into a book, or another method?

Let's start with ways to keep your archive of scrapping magazine clippings organized.

ORGANIZE:

PLASTIC SLEEVE METHOD: Archival page protectors are a mainstay in scrapbooking stashes and a good way to store whole pages clipped from magazines, as well as partial pages glue to another sheet of paper. The positives for this method include: you can see both sides of the page, you can take out only the page you need to a crop and use it, you can easily throw away clippings when they are no longer your style, and you can move them into other categories if you don't like your original method.

The only negative for this method really comes from the cost of purchasing all those sheet protectors.

GLUE THEM DOWN IN BOOKS: I love black hard bound books. You know, the ones used as journals or by artists. Something about bound black books all lined up just makes me feel so organized. I go so far as to attach little index tabs to sections in the books and glue my layout designs in categories. You can also jot yourself notes or draw layout sketches in the book next to your clippings. I also like doing these by year as styles change so quickly and with this method I always have the freshest, up to date layouts grouped together.

The negative is it is only one-sided. If you have a two sided clipping you can either stable the corner into the book or glue down just one side so you can still flip the page. Also, clippings are permanently affixed where you place them first, so no reorganizing or tossing out old styles is possible. You also have to take the whole book with you to crops.

FILE CARD METHOD: Like recipe cards we use for our favorite recipes to find them quick, many scrappers have used the same system for page layout ideas. Just cut out the layout or scrapbook idea and glue it to the card and file according to your system. A cool thing with this method is you can actually pull the idea card out and store it with your pictures until you scrap them. You could also do this method with a large Filofax and place each layout on a card. Filofaxes have index tabs you could use to distinguish your categories.

The negatives would be the size limitations as you could only use this method for small layout clippings. Also, spilling the box or Filofax would mean a lot of reorganizing.

CD ROM/HARD DRIVE METHOD: This is for the futuristic scrapper with space issues. This method would involve scanning them onto your computer and storing on CD-Roms. If you really want no paper trails, this is the one for you. Just like the way your organize the online ideas you collect , this method would be along the same lines. Subfolders can be made for categories on each CD. Rewritable CD's would allow you to add ideas until you fill a whole CD.

The negatives include a lot of time scanning and potential loss of data from computer crash or CD malfunction, i.e. scratched CD roms that will no longer play. This method, though saving a lot of paper, would require a lot of backing up on multiple mediums (hard drive and disks).

CATEGORIZE:
The next thing you will have to decide is how you are going to categorize the ideas.

Once you have picked your method of storing your clippings, now how will you categorize them? There are so many ways to categorize, but through trial and error you will find which one allows you the fastest/best access to ideas you have saved. Here are some subcategories:

TOPIC METHOD: Here you could sort by season, holiday, children, adult, birthday, or beach: general categories you see most layouts organized into on online scrapping sites. In fact, using those lists provided by the sites might be a good starting place for you.

TECHNIQUE/EMBELLISHMENT METHOD: This method would have you putting all the clippings (regardless of season or topic) into one section by embellishment or technique. Again, you can look at subsections on scrapping sites to get a feel for these categories. Examples would be tags, eyelets, fibers, paper tearing, or funkier techniques like shrink dinks.

PICTURES PER LAYOUT: Another subcategory could be by the amount of pictures on a layout. This would be similar to Becky Higgins' book, Creative Sketches, where you would place all layouts with 3, 4 , 5 or 10 pictures in a section, regardless of the theme or technique.

MANUFACTURER: Another way to categorize could be by manufacturer. This is a great place to put all the ads that companies place in the magazines using their products. I find that I see a lot of layouts with a product style and want to be able to reference them when I buy that product.

COLUMNS/ARTICLES: Layouts are not the only thing in articles -- consider also articles on techniques, journaling topics, and recurring columns in magazines, such as 3 layouts, 1 sketch, or the theme albums in Simple Scrapbooks. I like to make these a book of their own. If you have certain column you love, make a tab in your method for each column. Then as you read each magazine, you can cut it out and place it with the rest of the clippings from that column. It is really neat to have all those similar columns together for quick reference. You can also have sections for journaling ideas, theme books, and techniques (like metal embossing).

AD METHOD: Another thing you might not want to overlook is the ads. Many times I see an ad for an upcoming product, a new line, or just something I want to buy and then time goes by and you forget all about it. Try making a section in your method for products you want to purchase or new product releases to look for. Another thing I like to do is collect various web site information from articles and keep them all located in an area for reference.

BEYOND THE SCRAPPING MAGAZINE: As a final note, don't forget to look at your home decorating magazines and other magazines in terms of scrapbooking as well. Advertisers pay lots of money to professional graphic designers to have slick layouts made for their products, which can be easily scraplifted for your layouts. Be on the look out for picture placement, cool title ideas, color combos, quotes, and placement of embellishments. I add these clippings into my above categories just like my scrapping page ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, not just scrapping magazines.

CAMP PILE THEM UP: (We won't go there.)

Whatever method you use, I think we all agree that unless you have some system, you may never look at some of your magazines twice. In today's society with all we already have on our minds, trying to remember where you saw something is stressful and frustrating. Creative juices can flow much more freely if you aren't stressed about trying to find a layout you remember seeing or article on how to use your latest toy. Try these scrapbook ideas to organize your cropping.