How To Scrapbook: 15+ Ideas and Everything You Need to Get Your Scrapbooking Started

Getting started with anything creative like scrapbooking can be difficult, so we put together a few different things you can do to make the process easier including choosing a theme, gathering supplies, organising materials and workspace, and planning pages.

You can organise your scrapbook any way you like, but a lot of people suggest using a theme. This will keep it organised and make it easier to find specific memories, dedicate pages to specific situations, events, or people, and simply make it easier to get started with scrapbooking. 

You can use our 15 scrapbook ideas for beginners below or come up with your own theme. In addition to themes, you can also choose to organise chronologically, by person, or anything else. The sky’s the limit!

Now you can start gathering scrapbooking supplies including your scrapbook journal, photos and polaroids, newspaper clippings, stickers, mementos, stencils, page protectors, washi tape, cardstock, patterned paper, and more. 

However, as a pro tip, we recommend starting with only the basic supplies for your scrapbook like the book itself, photos that fit your theme, the most important embellishments, tape, glue, markets, and cardstock. That way, you can save money while getting started and see if you actually need all the other stuff.

While it can be tempting to just get started as soon as you get home from the craft store, we highly suggest organising your materials and work area before doing anything else. Make sure you can sit comfortably and reach all of the necessary supplies. If possible, set aside a specific scrapbook area that offers good natural light. Finally, make sure you keep it organised each time you finish your scrapbooking session. That way, it doesn’t look so stressful to start working on it again!  

The easiest way for beginners to learn how to scrapbook is to start the actual step-by-step scrapbook page process by planning the pages. Decide what idea or theme you want for each of the scrapbook album pages and plan them out as a template. Then, it will be easier to get started with a plan in place. 

These pages will depend on the scrapbook theme, which you can decide on using our 15 ideas below that can help you figure out how to make a scrapbook that displays your personal memories in the best possible way!

A scrapbook theme is the main idea behind your entire scrapbook. It can be anything from an entire person’s life to a single event, interest, hobby, or year. To decide on a theme, it can be helpful to ask yourself the purpose of the scrapbook, who it’s for, and who it’s about. To help you figure out how to start a scrapbook, here are 15 scrapbook ideas that you can use or adapt to your specific memorabilia.

You can organise an entire scrapbook based around your family and dedicate each page to a different family member. This is a fun theme with unlimited possibilities and will also keep your family photos and embellishments separate from your individual experiences, friends, and random social media photos.  

Having an entire scrapbook dedicated to your wedding is a great way to turn the best day of your life into a priceless keepsake. You can also include your romantic journey leading up to the wedding and the honeymoon after. Or, if you don’t want to only include yourself, include all your loved ones’ weddings in the same book!  

Use a scrapbook to detail the most important aspects of your friendship with another person or use it as an overall theme for your entire group of friends. You can include how you met, what you have in common, and it can even be fun to include stickers explaining the things they do that make you mad!

Hobbies or a single hobby can both be themes for your next scrapbook. Whether you like gardening, playing guitar, writing, singing, puzzles, magnets, or anything else, hobby scrapbooks can be super fun just for the simple fact that they revolve around other things that you are interested in.  

Having a scrapbook that details all of your pets can be a great way to memorialise them forever. Plus, there are tons of great dog, cat, mouse, hamster, bird, turtle, and other animal stickers and cutouts that can be exciting to use. You can even make it an adventure trying to find pre-made embellishments that look identical to your pet.

Since home is where the heart is, it makes perfect sense as a scrapbook theme. Try to incorporate all your favourite things about home and evoke the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that occur when you think about your home. This is a great starting point for beginners because many other themes can branch off of it.  

While many of these scrapbook ideas are based around your life and the people and events around you, another scrapbook theme that’s a little different is “nature.” By scrapbooking on the natural world you can also highlight your interaction with it including camping trips, nature-based hobbies, and more. You can even use eco-friendly scrapbook materials that could add a sustainable element.

As mentioned before, starting with basic supplies is a good idea, but what those essential scrapbooking supplies are depends on your goals, theme, and ideas. However, you can start with the scrapbook album, photos, important documents, scissors, and double-sided tape because those are literally the most important things you need to get started.  

In addition to these items, you don’t really need anything else. However, craft stores sell a wide assortment of other embellishments like buttons, thread, twine, rhinestones, washi tape, photo frames, and so much more that you can use to spruce up your scrapbook page layout but remember that these things can wait until later if they don’t fit within your current budget.

Before using your photos for scrapbook making, you must digitise them. Your scrapbook project will involve glueing, colouring, cutting, and altering your photos, but digitising them will preserve them in their original form forever. 

In addition, you can print digital images or even learn how to make a digital scrapbook using an online full-video tutorial. Once you have digitised your photos, you can print them to use for your scrapbook while still keeping the original copies in pristine condition. 

You can buy a photo scanner or flatbed scanner machine to digitise photos yourself and get decent results, but it can be very time consuming because you’ll have to scan every photo separately.

To help you on your scrapbooking journey, we wanted to provide some tips for DIY scrapbooking beginners. That way, you can learn how to start a scrapbook without stressing too much.

By digitising photos, you make it easier to share them on social media, preserve them for future generations, and organise them as a digital scrapbook or photo album. Click here to learn more about photo scanning with Capture!