Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Lay out your photos on a clean, dry surface so they are all visible. If you're working with too many photos to lay out neatly at once, lay them in piles first and organize the piles either by the subject of the photos (the person or thing in them), by event (birthdays, holidays, vacation) or by season. Then lay out one pile at a time so the photos from that pile can be selected and organized.
Look carefully at the photos and determine if there is a common theme that makes some pair well with others. For example, all of the pictures may be from a birthday party, but perhaps four have a particularly blue sky in the background and three others were taken near a patch of yellow flowers. Other pairing ideas could be pictures of the same person doing different things, photos taken in sequence (someone doing something with photos taken at different steps or actions), photos of family members all taken in the same location or photos of people wearing similar colors. Contrasting themes may also pair well, such as two photos with a lot of yellow and two or three others with bright blue or magenta.
Separate the paired photos into sets. Determine the number of photos per set by the album or scrapbook used. For example, if the album will hold four pictures per page, then separate the photos into sets of four. Scrapbooks are less limited since photos are often cut, cropped, overlapped or positioned to accommodate many photos per page, or fewer photos with more decorative paper and stickers.
Trim photos with scissors to crop out anything in them that is less desireable. This can be done for both albums and scrapbooks. For example, perhaps a photo of a child blowing out birthday cake candles was taken off-center and on one side of the photo a family member is partly cut-off in the picture and that takes away from the image of the child. Trim that photo so the child is centered or near-centered by cutting the edge of the photo with that partial-family member in it.
Trace stencils, if desired, on the backs of photos for a scrapbook project and cut the stenciled shapes with scissors. Cropping photos this way allows many to fit on a single scrapbook page. If using four or more photos on a scrapbook page, consider cropping two or three with an oval shape and the others into squares or rectangles; this provides a sense of balance while making each photo distinct.