How to make a scrapbook as a gift

A shop-bought present is soon forgotten. A book with your own photos, cards and words stays out, gets picked up again and is later shown to other people. You don't need to be an experienced scrapper to make one. It does help to make a few choices beforehand, though, so you're not still half-way through gluing the night before the birthday.

Start with the person you're giving it to

First ask yourself who it's for and why now. An anniversary calls for a different book than a colleague's leaving do or your mum's birthday. For an anniversary, a timeline is the obvious choice: from the day you met until now. For a farewell, it's more about what someone meant to others. For a birthday, you could choose one year of someone's life, or everything that person loves.

Think about their taste, too, not yours. If your boyfriend doesn't like cute, skip the pastels and hearts and go for calmer paper, kraft or darker shades. If someone loves sailing, music or travel, you've got your theme straight away.

A few ideas that often work well:

• your story in chronological order
• ten things you love about someone, with one page for each
• a map of the places where you met, lived or went on holiday
• the songs that belong to the two of you, each with a line from the lyrics
• a few pages about plans and dreams for the future

Choosing a format

The format decides how much time it takes and how much fits in. Roughly speaking, there are three options.

A mini album is small, often around 15 x 15 cm or even smaller, and quick to make. You can use a ready-made blank mini album, but it can be simple too: fold strips of sturdy cardstock (thick, plain card) in half, punch holes with an ordinary hole punch and thread them onto binder rings. With little envelopes, flaps and tags inside, a surprising amount fits in. A 10 x 15 cm photo almost fills a page like that, so you need very little decoration.

An explosion box is a little box that looks ordinary from the outside. Lift the lid and the sides fall open to reveal photos, cards and small details. The surprise makes it a good fit for a wedding, a new baby or a birthday. There's room in the middle for something small, such as a gift card, a few tea bags or money in a separate compartment. It holds fewer photos than an album, so pick the best ones.

A classic album, for example 30.5 x 30.5 cm (12 x 12 inches), gives you the most room for stories and large photos. It's also the most work. Choose this if you have plenty of time, or if the book needs to last for years, as for a golden wedding anniversary. Somewhere in between is an album with pocket pages, where you slide photos and cards into pockets and decorate only some of them.

Gathering photos without giving it away

With a surprise, the hard part often isn't the gluing but the gathering. The photos are on the recipient's phone, or with family who might let it slip.

A few things that help:

• Start with what you already have: your own phone, shared albums, old messages and emails.
• Choose one or two people you trust, such as a brother or best friend, and let them handle the rest. The fewer people who know, the smaller the chance someone lets it slip.
• Ask for photos with a cover story that holds up, such as a photo book for yourself or clearing out your phone.
• Have contributions sent to your email address or phone, not to a group chat the recipient is in.
• Keep everything in a box or folder somewhere the recipient never goes, such as at a friend's place or at work.

Print more photos than you think you'll need. Not everything will fit or look good side by side, and it's nice to have a choice. Collect small things too: a ticket from your first gig together, a restaurant receipt, a card you were once given. They make a page more personal than yet another photo.

Contributions from others

For a farewell, an anniversary or a milestone birthday, it's lovely when others write in it too. There are two ways to go about it.

The simplest: give everyone a card or tag of the same size, with an envelope and a deadline. They write a memory or a wish on it, and you stick the cards into the book or tuck them into pockets. Because the size is fixed, the book stays calm, even when handwriting and tone differ from person to person.

More work, but very personal: have each friend or family member make their own page with paper and stickers that you hand out. Give them a set size and one or two colours, otherwise it turns into a patchwork. Expect that not everyone will be on time, and keep a few spare pages up your sleeve.

Ask for short, concrete memories rather than general wishes. ‘That time we got on the wrong train in the rain’ says more than ‘you’re an amazing friend’.

Writing personal words

Many people find the writing harder than the design. Yet it doesn't have to be long. A few lines per page is plenty.

Write the way you talk. Say what happened, where you were and what you remember. An in-joke only the two of you get is absolutely fine. Add a date or a year, so the book still makes sense in ten years' time. If you work something out, such as the number of days together, also note the day you counted it.

What you don't dare say out loud, you can hide. A little envelope with a letter, a tag behind a photo or a flap to unfold turns the book into something to explore. Loose notes are fragile; a clear sleeve protects them from fingers and sticky tape.

Write your text on scrap paper first, and only copy it out once you're happy with it. Unsure about your handwriting? Print the text on sturdy paper, cut it out and stick it in.

How much time to allow

That depends a lot on the format and how much you decorate. A simple mini album with photos and a few lines of text can be done in an afternoon or evening. An explosion box with lots of small details easily takes several evenings. A large album, even if you're experienced, takes weeks rather than days.

Don't treat the gathering as an afterthought. Waiting for other people's photos, printing everything and choosing often takes longer than the gluing itself. A workable plan looks roughly like this:

1. Six to eight weeks before: choose the theme and format, let your trusted helpers in on it, ask for photos and contributions.
2. Three to four weeks before: sort the photos, print them and get your materials ready.
3. Two weeks before: lay out the pages and stick everything down, photos first, then the text and decoration.
4. The final week: finishing touches, the cover, and a spare day in case something goes wrong.

Lay your pages out loosely before you stick anything down. Move things around, look, and take a photo if you like, so you can find the layout again later. Only when the whole thing works does the glue come out.

Giving it

An explosion box or 3D element won't fit in an envelope, so give it in a sturdy box. Ideally, hand the book over yourself, so you're there when it's opened. If the recipient would also like to keep it another way, you can scan the pages afterwards. A scan on your shelf in Scrappd is a backup in case the original ever gets damaged.

It doesn't have to be perfect. A wonky photo or a crossed-out word is exactly what shows that you made it.