How to make a Keepsake Memory Book from an Album

Looking to create a memory book or keepsake for a special occasion or person?  Need ideas on how to make a unique album as a gift?  Want a completely unique guest book created by close friends and family that will also serve as a keepsake for generations? 

At your event, you will have a gathering of closest friends and family.  What a wonderfully rare opportunity to create a memory book or keepsake honoring the guest of honor!  Because each occasion has is own set of standards, this article will provide a number of ideas that can be used to create a generic keepsake album and can tweaked for your specific event.

Creating a meaningful keepsake with the guests is easy to do with inspiration.  Inspire your guests by: 

~ Leaving out photographs, memorabilia and stories of the loved ones on a table. 

~ Providing writing prompts or samples of what you are asking them to share.

• Ask for a favorite memory or story of the guest of honor
• Have each guest bring a favorite photograph
• Have each guest share a wish with the happy couple or guest  
• Provide a list of writing prompts such as the following prompts at a baby shower:
  
  • “I love your mother because…”
  • “I hope you inherit your mother’s…
• Ask for a quote on the event’s topic, such as “Retirement is…”  or “50 years of marriage is like…” 
• Ask each guest to share a piece of advice, such as a favorite recipe or the best marital advise for the bride-to-be
• Have your guest’s look into a “crystal ball” and make predictions on the guest of honor’s future
• Create a poem for the guest of honor.  Start the poem out with a few lines and ask each guest to add a rhyming line.
• Ask each guest to draw a stick figure or picture and to sign their “art” with their name.

~Your guests can write these messages on stationery-quality cards or directly onto the pages of a guest book or album.

In preparation for event, you will need to choose the album based upon:

• the theme of the event and the style of the recipient.  (Formal? Fun?  Somewhere in between?) 
• if you are going to add photographs.  Photographs, message cards and anything that needs to be adhered to the pages will require a blank page album with spacers.  Most post-bound albums and scrapbooks allow for 3D items to be added to the book without it bulging. 
• the size of your event - Smaller events can be accommodated by smaller albums.  Accordion albums are great for small, personal events – they are fun and stylish for guests’ signatures, messages and photographs.  Larger events are best accommodated by larger albums or albums expanded with more pages.  
• if you are going to ask guests to share messages directly into the book, you may prefer a lined guest book

Get started by asking a close guest or two to "set an example" of your desired results so others can follow their lead. Creators usually work best with an example to go by.

After the guests make their contribution, you can adhere the message cards and photographs using photo sleeves or photo corners. 

And it’s always a nice touch to present the book to your guest of honor with a letter about the book and the experience creating it as special keepsake just for him/her.  This will give the future generations a little context about the family heirloom... and it makes a great page marker! 

At Blue Sky Papers, we specialize in helping you create one-of-a-kind albums and guest books for a personally unique event and to honor someone special.