Is a Scrapbook a Good Christmas Gift

I'm pretty good at the whole scrapbooking thing. I also think that the best gift you can give someone always contains a part of yourself. That means that if I like you — I've probably made you a scrapbook-gift at least once. Furthermore, since moving last summer (and writing more notes to friends), I've been making a lot more scrapbook-gift presents for people. There's really no better feeling than seeing someone fall in love with a gift that you've made for them.

Scrapbook gifts are not for everyone. But if you have that friend or family member that's always going-on about how they would love to scrapbook, but they just don't have the time? Chances are, they're a good candidate for a scrapbook-gift.

I realize that the idea of giving someone a piece of your artwork is terrifying — all that time? all that effort? what if they hate it? Here are a couple of things that I've learned over the years about what makes for the best handmade scrapbook gifts.

1. Start Small.If you aren't sure if you're friend is the scrapbook-gift type, start small. Gift them a small mini-album, or send them a handmade card. The best candidates for scrapbook-gifts are the type of people that appreciate the effort-part of the gift as much as the thing-part of the gift.

2. Bulk Projects, If you're still not sure, A great way to test out your friends and family is to make a simple assembly-line type project, a set of cards or a mini-album, and see who is most responsive — then those people get the cooler scrapbook-gifts in the future.

3. Event Scrapbooking.Help someone tell their story. Graduation, Weddings, Birthdays — all great excuses for a scrapbook. Creating a pre-made scrapbook for someone's life event gives them an easy opportunity to document an important part of their story. Also, people tend to take lots of photos at life-events, so now those photos can have a place to sit instead of on everyone's phone.

4. Embrace Your Style.The hardest lesson I've learned is that the best gifts embrace your own style first. Yes, you might be making a gift for someone else, butyou are the one making the gift. Your best effort will come from creating something that you're comfortable with, and the person you're giving the gift to is getting a handmade present from you — your style should be present.

This following photos are from a scrapbook-gift album I gave to my sister for Christmas. She's moving from home (NYC) to Chicago for her first full-time grown-up job, and I wanted her to have a place to document all her new favorite things. She doesn't scrapbook herself, but she loves having scrapbooks of her favorite life events.

Between moving halfway across the country into a brand new city, and starting a totally new job, there's no way she's going to have time to properly document the amazing time she's going to have living in Chicago. So I made her this album to document all the good stuff that happens. All she needs to do is print photos from her phone, and jot down a few notes here and there to remember the details.