Get scrapbook tips and techniques to help document family history, baby and childhood keepsakes, and your most memorable moments, whether you're a beginner or an avid scrapbooker.

Edit your backlog of photos in chunks, starting with your most recent roll of film or photocard. Toss out any obvious bloopers first, and then pick out photos that illustrate some compelling moments.

Narrow down your theme to one event, era, or celebration you'd like to immortalize. For each related photo, jot down how you felt at the time it was taken -- and how you feel now. Use white or decorative paper, handwriting your thoughts or printing them out in your favorite font.

Accordion pages are great for travel scrapbooks, and easy enough for your kids to make. You use out-of-date travel books from the cities you visited, take them apart, and then reassemble using the original covers, a few of the pages, and maps.

Add mini travel photo pages to your scrapbook by slipping a piece of heavy card stock into airmail envelopes, inserting photos, and stacking them on a page.

Give your scrapbook pages pockets that you can fill with memorable items, like tickets or other memorabilia, by taping, folding, and sewing two pieces of paper to secure.

With pages from a post- or ring-bound scrapbook, colored paper, and our border template, you can create postcard pages for your scrapbook.

Darcy Miller, editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings, recommends taking proof sheets from your photographer, color-copying them, cutting them up, and glueing them onto the pages of your scrapbook. You can also glue in all your letters, cards, and even emails from well-wishers.

Instead of collaging a lot of photos, Darcy uses clear archival sleeves, which she pastes into the book. They come in all different sizes, so you can print out several of your favorite photos and then slip them into the sleeves.

Another trick: Instead of writing on the page of your actual scrapbook, write on a card and paste a picture in the middle, and slip that into an archival sleeve.

Make a color photocopy of the front page of the newspaper for the day you're scrapbooking about, and then shrink it down. On the opposite page, you can write things that were relevant on that day, such as popular songs and movies, world events, and trends.

You can make titles for pages by punching photographs of letters or using chipboard letters.

Avoid using magnetic pages whose glue can ruin photos over time. Light combined with humidity and temperature fluctuations can ruin photos too.

When affixing photographs, avoid placing an adhesive in the center, as it can warp the surface and create craters. Try an invisible vellum tape, which adheres very well and barely shows behind sheer paper. If you do any writing, use a pigment ink rather than a dye ink, as it lasts far longer.

According to Joe Callahan, chairman of the Scrapbook Preservation Society, bare metals on scrapbooks, like wires used as embellishments, can corrode and turn to oxides; cover any exposed metals and trim wire ends that can puncture or scratch any adjacent items.

Metals should be separate from paper, and if you have an object like a dog tag, make sure it isn't placed directly opposite original photos or documents that can be harmed.

See More Tips on Preserving Memorabilia