• Go through your photos your old photo albums, shoe boxes, or from your digital pictures stored on your PC.
• Separate your photos into smaller categories such as year, special events, individual children, holidays, vacations, birthdays, etc.
• Pick your best photos. If you like, choose a theme. Choose 4 to 8 of the best shots.
• Choosing a focal point. From the 4-8 best photos, pick your absolute favorite as a focal photo.
• Arrange the photos on a page. Don't make everything symmetrical. It's okay to tilt the photos and overlap a little. This adds interest to the page

Layout:

• Choose a theme for your pages, such as birthday, season, wedding etc...
• It’s best to start with a solid background, then build on top of that.
• Choose a color scheme of 2-3 prominent colors from the focal photo to use as a color scheme for your layout.
• Choose a coordinating (I like to call) “back-drop” for your picture(s). Use the decorative scissors to trim the sides if the “back-drop”.

Embelish:

• Here’s the fun part.
• Decorate your page with stickers, or those cool caption stickers.
• Die cuts. You can also make your own die cuts out of cardstock scrap.
• Ribbons, old jewelry can even be used.
• Old invitations. Party decorations.
• Use old scraps of cardstock and put on all 4 corners of the page.
• One thick piece of cardstock which is a 3 inches wide the length of your page, and position on the either side of the page.
• Or, take a piece of cardstock that is about 3 inches wide and the width of your page and position at the top or the bottom of your page.
• Use these areas for your journal.
• Make a pocket page and store love notes or old movie stubbs.

Fix it to the Page:

• Once you have everything in place just the way you like it, you can use a hot glue gun or acid-free stick glue, but don’t glue it until you're happy with the layout.

Journalize:

• Tell a story about the people in the photos. Where they were, be sure to include dates.
• Use cardstock or color coordinating paper to write your story then place close by the photo, or on a designated page of it’s own.