My daughter is still fairly young, so when I design scrapbook layouts I tend to stick with more classic designs. I hope that by doing so when she becomes a mother, and later a grandmother, my hard work will withstand the test of time and she won’t look at the pages and wonder what I was thinking when I put them together.
Timeless designs are safe, but they can also be boring. The key to making them shine is to include your own sense of style. In addition, for practical purposes, you want to use quality materials. There is no way your memory album will last a year, let alone a generation if you use cheap items. Focus on utilizing acid-free products and strong adhesives.
Also, if you are looking to pass on your scrapbooks to younger members of the family so they can one day share them with their children it’s a good idea to label your photos. Include names, dates and a brief description of where the picture was taken and perhaps a line or two about the image’s significance. For pictures that tell a longer story, consider adding journaling blocks that describe the emotion behind the image or your feelings about the event or theme you are scrapbooking.
Memorabilia is also very important to include in scrapbooks that you want to pass on through the generations. Your mother’s handwritten recipe cards, the creased paper your dad wrote his wedding vows on, or love letters sent from your grandfather to your grandmother when he was stationed overseas during the war are invaluable mementos that should be well preserved. Other personal memorabilia, such as pressed flowers from a prom corsage, ticket stubs from your first concert or postcards from your backpacking tour of Europe are all archival material. To keep them from turning yellow, coat them with a scrapbook preservative such as Archival Mist. Or, you could create pocket type pages to slip the items behind. This will enable future generations to take them out for viewing, while protecting the rest of your album.