As you can see, these pages are very effective at conveying the mood and the cuteness of the holiday! There is great use of space and color. Care was made to glue down the photo so that there were no "lumps"  so that the picture set on the "frame" would be perfectly flat. The picture was cropped perfectly and the "journal" caption was a great touch!

Feel free to submit your favorite scrapbook page and we will gladly post them here!

Several things you should buy now are; graduation themed binder or the capability to theme in graduation theme, graduation themed photo matts, a lot of colored construction paper, graduation related 3-D hats-miniature diplomas, stencils, plenty of graphics such as pencils-school desks-school house-apples; just about anything related to a school theme.

When you buy all your supplies in advance, plan out your layout and also plan on how many pictures you are going to take at the graduation ceremony. You may think of taking as many as you can so you have the lattitude to crop some of them and make different shapes of them. Remember about the high quality of adhesives you will use that will not discolor or turn brittle. You want a glue that will not make ripples under your photos.

Don’t forget to write out as many journaling pieces that you can. The rest of your journaling will come from describing your experiences at the ceremony. Have fun with this theme…after all, this a memory you want to relive for many years, a time to be very proud!

As we all know, pictures tell a "thousand words," but sometimes, we have to help the casual reader with a text caption, just what the scrapbook page or scrapbook is all about! There are several ways to come up with great text content for your scrapbook.

First thing you can do is act as a TV news reporter. When looking at the picture you are about to mount in a page, pretend that you are interviewing the person whose picture it is and ask what happened here or where was the picture taken at. What was the reason for the people or place to be on that picture? You can go on to "ask" what kind of fun did you have? What adventure did you go through at that place? You get the idea.

Another great idea is to look at the picture and write a poem about it. You do not have to be a Robert Frost or Ernest Hemmingway, but simply, be yourself! The words do not have to ryhme, or even make sense! Just some short prose can liven up the picture at hand.

One last idea is to write a "letter" as if you were sending this scrapbook page to someone in an envelope. Remember at Christmastime when you received "picture" postcards in the mail? It would be on photo paper describing what plans they would have at Christmas, or a paper letter enclosed in an envelope with a photographed attached and the letter would be a brief description of what the family has been up to and what they intend on doing during the holidays.

So, when choosing each picture to add to the scrapbook, make sure you have a good idea of what you want to say. Remember, there is no rule that you have to comment on each and every scrapbook page, only enough to keep a "flow" going throughout the book.

Once you have lined up all the pictures in your scrapbook theme, you should concern yourself with the type of matting that will be used to surround your pictures. Matting for years was used in painting, especially oil paintings, to fashionably "frame" the picture to give it more added value to the viewer. Some of the mattes were very ornate, others were simple and understated. Some blended in so well with the painting, that you didn’t even notice the matte was even there!

A good rule of thumb for matting your photos is to make sure the color of the matte, complements the picture and not over-powers it. In other words, say you are displaying pictures of a lake or body of water, a nice matte color could be a nice neutral blue color. Don’t forget to pay attention to scrapbook mattes that have a pattern in them. The pattern should complement the pictures as well. Use your good judgement on the color and pattern of your matte.

Mounting squares: Mounting squares are a great adhesive to use on your photos, because they leave none of the messy residue associated with glue sticks.

Photo corners: Often used in heritage albums, photo corners are a good way to ensure that you’ll be able to remove photos from your scrapbook at a later date if necessary.

Liquid glue: Since it provides a strong and permanent bond, liquid glue is a good general purpose adhesive for scrapbooking. It works on photos, paper, and most lightweight embellishments, although it can take often take awhile to dry completely.

Glue dots: Glue dots are available in a variety of sizes, making them a smart choice for almost any type of dimensional scrapbook embellishment. If you want to use them with vellum, however, make sure you read the label carefully. Only certain types of glue dots are made to work with this transparent material.

Foam adhesive: If you’re interested in making customized paper piecing scrapbook embellishments, foam adhesive squares are an easy way to add dimension to your designs.

Double sided tape: Special double sided tapes designed for scrapbooking, such as Wacky Tac, are great for adhering beads, glitter, and other fine embellishments to your pages.

When buying adhesives, make sure they are acid free and archival safe. You would not want an adhesive that turns color, gets brittle or loses its "stickiness" with age.

In those days, scraps were printed pieces of paper with various ornate designes. The very first scrapbooks contained pressed flowers, paper cuts, feathers and other bits of memoriebilia. Scrapbooking became more popular in the middle class nineteenth century life.

A very popular type of scrapbook, "drawing room," scrapbook, was the center of social exchange and discussion for people during the mid eighteenth century. These were full of memories and stories of family members and activities.

Scrapbooking started to decline during World War 1. The recession caused scrapbooking businesses to close down.

During the mid to late 1800’s, various companies began producing leather bound scrapbook albums that included themed pages. Most common designs were of birds and flowers.

Famous American author, Mark Twain was into scrapbbooks! He invented scrapbook pages that had pre-adhesive pages for mounting pictures. This was one of Mark Twains most popular books sold.

In 1980, modern scrapbooking was made popular when Marielen Christensen presented over 50 volumes of her family memory books at the World Conference on Records in Utah, USA. It generated so much interest that the Christensen family opened a store called Keeping Memories Alive, that is still in business in Utah.

Martha Stewart will start out in specializing in scrapbooks for baby and wedding themes, since there has been a baby boom as of late and with many people getting married. Although her presentation will be geared towards the beginner with an upscale twist. This should be a great addition to present in her magazines, TV shows and other signature media outlets she owns.

Stay tuned for segments on her TV show on scrapbooking.

For those of you who are very "right brained" creative, you will not have any problems coming up with many different ideas for your pages and themes. However, the best way to get your "juices" flowing is to see what others have done with their scrapbooks.

Other very good resources for other scrapbooking ideas can be found below:

http://www.shelleysscrapbooklayouts.com/

http://www.allscrapbookingideas.com/scrapbooking-ideas.html

http://www.michaels.com/art/online/projectList?channelid=8

http://genealogy.about.com/od/heritage_scrapbooking/

http://www.simplescrapbooksmag.com/inspiration/index.ihtml

These are just several of hundreds of resources online that can help give you ideas when starting out on your next scrapbook. If you have any great resources with helping you "jumpstart" your perfect idea or theme, please post it in our comments here.

The tools you need for your idea notebook should be a vinyl folder notepad that can hold a pen and a legal pad of paper. The next thing you should have is a collection of magazine articles, newspaper articles, or even interesting online articles that you print out from what other scrappers are doing. You know, just about every scrapbook idea has been tried and used, but you can put your own "twist" on it.

Along with keeping your ideas in one organized place, make sure you have enough pictures and other archived items to fill out this new scrapbook.

When you start your sketch sheet from an idea you have chosen from your idea notebook, make sure you take the time to choose a binder that reflects the "mood" of your theme. If you are in a "black and white" mood for a topic, make sure you have black and white photographs and lay it out in a binder that is black and white or gray in color.

A scrapbook comes alive when it aligns with your particular "mood" you are in while planning and starting to put together the scrapbook. The number of ideas in your scrapbook notebook is only limited by your imagination.

1) Draw the rectangles or other shapes of where you want to place the photos on the legal pad.

2) Draw rough shapes of the decorative items or letters you want in and around the pictures.

3) Draw the outline of the pages and additional design patterns that you want around the whole page

A good example of a scrapbook planning sketch can be found here.

In the example shown on that link, the theme is a father and son theme.