Many families have shoe boxes full of photos and documents, photo albums full of memories, and junk journals full of ideas. A scrapbook can organize all those scattered memories to create a unified theme, story, or personal reflection. Plus, it makes it easier to go back and find specific memories and share them with loved ones and family members. However, sometimes it can be difficult to know how to get started with scrapbooking. That’s why Capture’s archival experts put together these 15 ideas for scrapbook themes so you can create beautiful keepsakes.

Keep reading to learn how to get started with DIY scrapbooking including the essential scrapbooking supplies, tips and tricks, and then use our 15 scrapbook ideas to decide on a specific theme for your scrapbook layout.

What Is Scrapbooking?

Scrapbooking is the creative process of preserving memories through a combination of photos, paper designs, and written stories - all compiled into a physical or digital album. More than just placing pictures in a book, it’s a way to tell your personal or family history in a meaningful, artistic format.

Some people use stickers, patterned paper, memorabilia (like ticket stubs or cards), and even digital designs to bring their layouts to life. Others focus on minimalism, letting photos and captions speak for themselves. Either way, scrapbooking is about celebrating life’s moments - both big and small.

What You Need to Start Scrapbooking

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, organizing materials and workspace, and planning pages.

Choosing a Theme

Most beginners find it helpful to pick a theme before anything else. A consistent theme keeps your scrapbook organized and helps you decide which photos and mementos to include. It also makes the creative process more focused and less intimidating.

Popular scrapbook themes include:

• Travel adventures
• Baby milestones
• Family heritage
• Wedding memories
• Holidays and special events

You can also organize your scrapbook chronologically, by person, or around a specific topic. For more inspiration, scroll down to see our list of 15 scrapbook ideas for beginners.

Gathering Supplies

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.

Organizing Materials

Before diving in, take a few minutes to set up a clean, well-lit space where you can comfortably create. Keep your tools and materials within reach to avoid frustration later. If possible, dedicate a small table or corner of your room for ongoing scrapbook projects.

How do I stay organized while scrapbooking?

• Use bins or drawers to separate materials
• Store embellishments by type or theme
• Keep frequently used items close by
• Tidy up after each session so it’s easy to return

Staying organized makes the process feel less stressful and more enjoyable every time you sit down to work.

Planning Pages

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!

15+ Ideas for Scrapbook Themes

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.

Travel

A travel scrapbook is a great way to organize all your vacations in one place. You can use each page or a couple of pages for a different trip or even create mini albums for each travel experience. For a lot of people, their travels are some of their most precious memories, which is why this theme is quite popular.

Family

You can organize 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.

Baby

Baby pictures are wonderfully adorable, so why not keep them altogether? This is a fun way to see the similarities between different babies in your family at different time periods. Try to include photos as well as information about birth weight, birthdays, size, and more to document each baby and preserve the memories.

Wedding

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!

Graduation

Graduation scrapbooks make great gifts and can organize the entire educational career of a single person leading up to that special graduation day. You can include graduation dates, GPAs, college admission letters, and more.

Friendship

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!

Sports

For sports lovers, this can be a great theme that details fandom and includes athletic feats. You can use a page for each of your favorite sports teams and use other scrapbook paper for photos, journals, and other aspects of your own athletic journey.

Hobbies

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.

Seasons

Do you love a certain season over all others? Create a scrapbook based on why you love it! In addition, you can create different scrapbooks for each season and include all the events, birthdays, thoughts, and feelings about each season.

Pet

Having a scrapbook that details all of your pets can be a great way to memorialize 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.

And if you have printed photos or old negatives of your first pet, don’t let them fade-convert negatives to digital so you can keep them safe and easily add them to your scrapbook.

School

School is a huge part of our lives, and you can use a scrapbook to outline your entire educational career or just to cover a specific elementary school, middle school, high school, or college. It can detail school friends, favorite classes, funny occurrences, and more. If your family has older school photos stored as slides, now’s a great time to digitize slides and bring those memories into your album. Capturing these milestones on paper makes for a nostalgic and inspiring project.

Home

Since home is where the heart is, it makes perfect sense as a scrapbook theme. Try to incorporate all your favorite 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. 

Music

For music lovers, a music scrapbook makes perfect sense. You can cover everything from particular instruments to bands, concerts, genres, songs, and more. This can make a very creative and unique scrapbook that focuses on your specific musical tastes.

Nature

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.

Holidays

Some of the most cherished memories happen during the holidays. Whether it’s Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners, or New Year’s celebrations, a holiday scrapbook is the perfect way to relive those warm, joyful times. Include recipes, family traditions, and even cards or wrapping paper pieces. If you’ve stored your past holiday memories on film, don’t worry- 35mm slide conversion to JPEG makes it easy to preserve and reuse them in your scrapbook. These albums also make beautiful keepsakes to pass on to future generations.

Essential Supplies for Scrapbooking

When you’re just starting out, it's best to keep it simple. The core items every scrapbooker needs include:

• A scrapbook album or notebook
• Printed photos or Polaroids
• Important documents or keepsakes
• Scissors
• Double-sided tape or glue stick

These basics allow you to create meaningful pages without spending much upfront. Everything else is optional and can be added later as your skills and ideas grow.

Once you’re comfortable with the essentials, you can begin adding creative elements like:

• Cardstock and patterned paper – for colorful backgrounds and layers.
• Stickers and embellishments – to enhance the theme or mood of the page.
• Washi tape and paper frames – great for borders and decorative accents.
• Font stencils, cut-outs, or die-cuts – for neat titles and captions.
• Paper trimmer – to create clean, professional-looking edges.

These tools help you customize each page and express your creativity.

Digitizing and Printing Old Photos

Before using your photos for scrapbook making, you must digitize them. Your scrapbook project will involve gluing, coloring, cutting, and altering your photos, but digitizing your photos 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 digitized 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 digitize photos yourself and get decent results, but it can be very time consuming because you’ll have to scan every photo separately.

Alternatively, you can choose Capture to digitize your photo albums, which is affordable and takes less than 30 days. Plus, we’ll ensure the highest possible quality and can even use our patented touchless photo album scanning to digitize photos from your albums without anyone ever having to touch or remove them.

Tips and Tricks for Scrapbooking

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.

Set a Color Scheme

By setting up a color scheme that includes 1 or 2 primary colors and a few secondary colors, you can keep the entire scrapbook unified toward your theme. That doesn’t mean you can’t use other colors, but when you do, try to use contrasting colors to make aspects of each page stick out.

Add Texture

A great scrapbook is more than flat pages and photos. Create visual and tactile interest by layering cardstock, using textured papers, and adding small objects like:

• Buttons
• Felt shapes
• Washi tape
• 3D stickers
• Foldout elements or envelopes for hidden items

This creates a multi-sensory experience and brings your memories to life in a hands-on way.

Incorporate Journaling

Should I write in my scrapbook?

Yes! Journaling is one of the most powerful ways to connect your photos with your emotions and memories. Add handwritten captions, notes, or full journal entries to reflect on events, people, or milestones.

Even a few lines next to a photo can make your scrapbook more personal and meaningful, especially for family members or future generations who may read it years from now.

Choose the Right Adhesive

When working with valuable items like Polaroids, vintage photos, or newspaper clippings, always use acid-free adhesives. These help preserve the integrity of your keepsakes over time.

Best adhesives for scrapbooking:

• Double-sided tape (acid-free)
• Photo-safe glue dots
• Dry adhesive runners
• Low-tack mounting squares

Avoid liquid glue unless it's specifically made for archival use since it can wrinkle paper or damage delicate materials.

Leave Extra Space

Depending on your theme, your scrapbook is destined to grow, so make sure you leave room for additional photos, pages, expansions, memorabilia, and more. That may mean leaving room on some of the pages or leaving extra pages at the back of the scrapbook depending on how you’re organizing the page layout.

Digital vs. Traditional Scrapbooking

What’s the difference between traditional and digital scrapbooking? Both styles help you preserve memories creatively, but the process and tools are very different. Here’s how they compare:

Traditional Scrapbooking

This is the hands-on, tactile version most people know. You print photos, gather paper and supplies, and physically build each page.

Pros:

• Tangible and personal
• Great for keepsakes and memorabilia (like ticket stubs or pressed flowers)
• Can be relaxing and screen-free

Cons:

• Requires physical storage space
• Materials can add up in cost
• Photos may fade or become damaged over time

Digital Scrapbooking

Instead of paper and glue, you use software or online tools to create scrapbook layouts using digital photos, text, and graphics. You can then share your scrapbook online or print it as a photo book.

Pros:

• Easy to edit and duplicate pages
• No physical clutter
• Ideal for sharing online or gifting
• Preserves your photos in high quality

Cons:

• Less tactile
• Requires basic digital tools and skills

Which Is Better for You?

Should I start a digital or traditional scrapbook? It depends on your goals. If you love crafting by hand and want a physical keepsake, go traditional. If you prefer convenience and want to share your scrapbook digitally, go with a digital version - or even do both!

Get Started Scrapbooking

Now that you have 15 scrapbook ideas and themes to get you started as well as tons of tips and tutorials that teach you how to scrapbook, you’re ready to get started. Settle on a theme, buy the basic supplies, set up your area, decide on the page themes, and then get started, but remember to preserve your photos as digital copies first.