Do you have a box in a dusty corner of the house containing old photos and other bits of memorabilia that are of little use but impossible to throw away?

Making a creative scrapbook to share with family and friends could be the perfect way to organise those bits and bobs. In this feature we’re going to show how.

The practice of keeping scrapbooks is nothing new. Back in Ancient Greece, making notebooks of thoughts and memories was a popular practice.

Plato encouraged the pastime as a way of creating an artificial memory, and today the practice serves a similar function.

With the development of multimedia PCs and the internet, scrapbooking has evolved to a new level. Digital scrapbooks can be printed out at home and published online.

They can be used to to celebrate special occasions such as the arrival of a baby, or be kept as a dedicated websites that enable scrappers, as enthusiasts call themselves, to share their work and have it rated by others as well as discussing tips and techniques.

It’s surprising how many dedicated scrappers there are out there, and after browsing their creations online you’ll no doubt feel inspired.

Putting pen to paper
At the most basic level, a scrapbook could be a notepad bought from a stationer and filled with glued-in photos and tickets.

But why not make use of a PC to create something more professional looking? There’s no need to throw away that empty notebook if the blank pages fill you with inspiration ­ use a PC to print favourite digital photos and decorate it later with stickers and scraps.

Take a look at Scraptalk.com to get an idea of the products that are available, from paper cutters and punches to stickers and glue. Click on ‘Scrap show and tell’ at the top of the page and check out the gallery to get some inspiration from seasoned scrappers. There’s more of the same over at Scrapjazz.com.

Click on the Gallery tab to see other people’s work and, if a page is particularly appealing, click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it.

Click on the Learning tab to see articles written by members and then on the My Jazz tab to register free as a member and create a space on the site to upload scrapbook pages ready for others to enjoy. It is also possible to rate other people’s pages according to how cute or well designed you think they are.

Scrapbooking is a popular hobby in the US and, as a result, many of the online resources that appear when searching for that term on a search engine will be based across the Atlantic. This is fine for picking up tips and inspiration but is not much use for researching products and prices. Prospective scrappers from the UK will find more relevant material at Ukscrappers.co.uk.

Let’s take a look at a how to dispense with the notepad and create a totally digital scrapbook.

Go digital
It is possible to create basic scrapbooks using any page-layout, image-editing or word-processing software. However this requires a good grasp of the chosen program.

The easiest way to get started is with software that includes templates, such as a card-making program. The best results come from using specialist scrapbooking programs that come with a choice of layouts and designs to fill with your words and pictures. Then you can embellish the pages by adding graphics, attractive fonts and special effects.

Any photos you want to include will need to be loaded on to the computer ready to use. This may involve scanning prints, uploading pictures from a digital camera or moving them from a mobile phone.

If scanning photos in, save them as TIFF files as this format preserves more quality than a standard JPEG. We find it easiest to drag the photos we want to use into a folder on the desktop so they are easy to find when the time comes to insert them.