36 Great Scrapbook Ideas and Albums

Instead of picking and pressing wildflowers, which depletes the local flora and is illegal in some places, take a snapshot with your smartphone. Using a software program make the snaps feel more vintage. 

Have you recently adopted a new pet? Start a scrapbook to document life with your new companion.

Anything small -- seaside flotsam, pressed leaves, or souvenirs from a museum -- can be assembled in 35-millimeter slide sleeves for clear viewing; just stitch up the pockets. Birch ply, cut to fit, separates the sleeves. A shell, glued to thicker wood, makes a strong cover, literally and visually.

Anything you collect is potential material for a scrapbook. Business cards culled from memorable stores, restaurants, and hotels in a particular city can be held in place by a collection of exotic paper clips. The character of this scrapbook is all in the shapes of the clips (inserted into small slits made with a utility knife) and the designs of the cards. It's also practical: You can take the cards out whenever needed, or replace old ones with new favorites.

The pattern of an engraved or embossed surface -- cutlery, coins, a hotel room number, an architectural detail -- can be recorded in an artful way with a rubbing. All you need is a cake of wax (available at art-supply stores), tissue paper, and your book (we used a standard photo album). Place the object under the tracing paper, then rub with the wax. Easier still is to fill an entire piece of paper with rubbings, then cut into strips and paste onto pages.

A photograph captures a place with precision. But when it comes time to paste the images in a book, why not organize your experience a little more impressionistically? This collage tells the story of a trip to Vienna. After a trip, you can make a series of collages consisting of pictures you've taken and objects you've collected along the way -- anything from a restaurant napkin to a packet of sugar. Then photograph all the collages and arrange them in a leather-bound book for a presentation that unfolds like a movie.

Enlarge photos from a recent trip and make foldouts: an accordion type, formed by taping photocopies together, or an origami style, using a bone folder to make sharp creases. These inserts, pasted into an ordinary journal, add an element of surprise to the story of the trip and convey some of the city's grandeur.

A baby book that feels as sweet and precious as your child's infancy can be made by hand. Fold four (or more) pieces of paper in half (we used baby blue, 100 percent cotton rag with hand-torn edges); sew along seam on a machine. When you spread the pages open, they form a playful pinwheel. Create multiple volumes, and indulge every instinct, including a baby's first sock, the label from a favorite jar of fruit, a footprint, handwritten lyrics from a lullaby. As for closure, what's more fitting than a diaper pin?

Here's another approach to a travelogue: Let your scrapbook contain a few pages of literal scraps. Cut and crop photos, then fashion an intriguing mosaic of images that have the fragmentary quality of memory.

Some of the most creative scrapbooks spring from a passion or hobby. Once a theme is loosely established, you can incorporate any elements that evoke your particular interest. This culinary chronicle, made by Martha Stewart Living style director Ayesha Patel, savors all things food-related, with an accent on beautiful packaging. There are paper muffin cups, tags and bags of much-loved teas, bakery twine, shopping bags, a patisserie sack, fruit and wine labels, the card from a wine shop, a map of Paris. Anything that recalls the aroma of a favorite shop or restaurant has a place. The book itself can be as simple as this blank ledger, a flea-market find.

Paper muffin cups are artfully arranged on a page opposite labels that feature corresponding fruit names.

Materials associated with food, like waxed paper, are used, in this case to "wrap" the cover.

Tabs -- made from book-binding tape that was rubber-stamped, cut into two-inch strips, folded in half, and glued to the paper -- mark each page with a little character.

You can also try thinking of a scrapbook as a traveling companion. When Martha Stewart Weddings editorial director Darcy Miller took a three-week trip to Africa, she brought along a blank book (light enough to carry in her bag) and a small kit -- of scissors, magic markers, rubber cement, and a portable watercolor set. "I'd take my book out while the guide was talking about something, a tree or flower, and sketch it," she says. "By drawing something, you have to really look at it, which forces you to 'see' it." Miller painted the watercolor study of African baskets one afternoon at one of the camps. On the facing page of the book is an enlarged photo of her talking to a safari guide who explained the significance of the patterns -- something Miller never would have learned had she not stopped to do the watercolors.

Give the maps that guided you to favorite destinations a second life as scrapbook showstoppers. The printed papers become colorful and fitting backdrops for vacation mementos.