by Lokemun Magar

Created on: June 23, 2009

What is a simple scrapbook? In making a simple scrapbook, the scrapbook maker has the freedom to select the ideas, presentation mode and size of his scrapbook. He can decide the shape of his scrapbook and follows a schema from the cover page to the back page and through the pages in between. He decides on a framework to follow in designing, making and completing his scrapbook. As his scrapbook follows a theme based on an event or an occasion, it will have a title, a definite beginning and an end, sections and page numbers to the sections reflected on a content page.

It is simply a scrapbook that is idiot-proof and simple enough to assemble so even a child will be able to do it without cutting himself with the scissors or stapling his thumb, or coloring off the paper edge and onto the table. This is because a simple scrapbook has a pre-determined theme, is based on an occasion or is an organization of collected items.

These are suitable materials you can use to make a simple scrapbook:

- discarded exercise book, long strips of durable cardboard folded into accordion-like shapes, CD paper wraps, envelopes or paper bags to hold the embellishments

- pictures and photographs of a single event such as your daughter's first birthday celebration

- dried flowers collected on a nature study trip

- discards of silk materials collected at a silk fair

- short notes on a visit to the Mountaineer's Museum in Darjeeling

- recipes printed on food cartons collected over two years

In the good old days when the computer and the television were non-existent, people spent a lot of their time on handicraft and item collection. A simple scrapbook can give a child days of leisurely creative pleasure and teach him content and organizational skills.

Paper was scarce and relatively expensive to many. An old exercise book sufficed. Used paper was carefully removed both front and back and the cover page was wrapped in recycled gift wrap or decorated with words and drawings and painstakingly colored.

A child's scrapbook would consist of used stamps and stickers, arranged in all manner to suit the scrapbooker's taste while titles and notes on the items were painfully and meticulously inscribed on the relevant pages.

An older child's scrapbook may consist of lyrics of favorite songs, again painstakingly inscribed onto each page. The illiterate may have their exercise books filled with self-designed clothes for their paper dolls or themselves, inclusive of tabs at the appropriate

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