Need creative ideas for personalizing your photo albums? If you
want the look of a scrapbook without all of the time and expense,
try embellishing your photo albums with one of these easy tips.

My husband and I recently returned from celebrating our tenth
anniversary in Hawaii. We took lots of pictures and I wanted to
throw something together quickly and easily to show all of our
pictures to friends and relatives. I didn't have time to create
a scrapbook for our trip.

I went through all of our trip mementos and trimmed down the
information I wanted to keep, just like I would do when preparing
a scrapbook. Instead of going ahead and creating a scrapbook, I
decided to place our vacation memories in a photo album.

After collecting all my photos and mementos, I arranged all the
photos in chronological order. I then tucked the mementos in
between the pictures, placing them with the photos I wanted to
display them with.

My mother-in-law had given me some cute Hawaiian scrapbooking
embellishments for Christmas last year, in anticipation for our
trip, so I arranged them in the first photo sleeve in the photo
album (see photo). I then placed the photos in the photo album,
arranging the mementos in their own photo sleeves alongside the
photos.

The photo album turned out great, and received lots of
compliments! It is the perfect combination of photo album and
scrapbook. Here are some more tips to get you started:

* When going through your mementos, just cut out the most
important things you want to keep, like parts of a tour brochure.
We went on a sunset dinner cruise and I cut out of the brochure
the name of the cruise ship and the menu we were served. I also
saved brochures that described tours we took. These descriptions
go along great with the photos you take of the places you visit.

* Ticket stubs fit into the photo sleeves well and are a great
photo accent.

* I used scrapbook stickers to label the front of my photo album
(see photo). I bought a photo album from Target that already had
a palm tree on the front! I just added the name of the album and
the date.

There are many ways you can embellish your photo album. Anything
you can tuck into a photo sleeve will really accentuate your
pictures.

These albums aren't just for vacations. They would also be great
for preserving holiday, baby, or school memories. Use your
imagination and you can create a photo keepsake in only a couple
of hours!

Photos of finished project:
http://www.crafty-moms.com/scrapbooking/photo-album.shtml

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Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For
scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family
memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.