Summer break is a great time to look back through your school-related photos from the previous year so you can scrap them before next year’s school events muddle your memory.

Scrapbooking A Child’s School Project

Journaling to Aiden reads: Today you brought home a dinosaur egg from school. Really, it was a rock in plaster. But not your your mind. For you this was the real thing and you were ecstatic.

You came at this egg very seriously, asking me for tools. I set you up with a screwdriver and hammer. You worked on it forever. So serious about it. My favorite part was the look of sheer unbelief when you first revealed the rock–ahem–dinosaur egg. A favorite day. For both of us.

The canvas:
For this page I used Photoshop to crop most of my photos into 2-inch squares. After print them, I arranged them in a stream, or a long canvas of their own. I love the story-telling quality of the linear progression: 1) Happy Aiden with his tools; 2) Broken pieces of plaster as he pounds with his hammer; 3) A surprised look as he makes his first break-through; 4) More pounding; 5) A look of amazement at his totally exposed egg.

Scrapbooking A Page From College

Journaling reads: It cracked me up to find that both Brandon and Nicole had fallen asleep while they were studying. Is that Gina and I making fun of them later in a sleeping dog pile???

My favorite way to place multiple items on a page (in this case, three photos and a comic strip) is to create their own square-shaped canvas, filling any gaps with patterned paper or journaling boxes. These spaces are a fun place to gather embellishments that support the story. For this story, I chose stickers with words that say:

* Due Date * To Do List * Little By Little the Time Goes By * Friends * Memories *

Note: Because I didn’t write down my roommate-story right away, I am no longer sure of the details. If that happens to you, don’t let that keep you from telling what you think happened. Share a detail as a question if you’re really not sure.

Whether you tell your story as a progression with a photo stream, or in the pockets of a mosaic square, creating a canvas within the canvas of your layout is a fun and interesting way to tell a tale.