Christmas and holiday scrapbook page ideas

A December diary

Many people keep a December diary album to document the busy holiday season. This project involves making one page for each day from December 1 to 25. It is a good way to capture small daily moments leading up to the main celebration. You can set up your pages in advance to save time during the month.

A standard digital scrapbook page is 12 x 12 inches at 300 pixels per inch. This equals 3600 x 3600 pixels. Setting up a template at this size makes it easy to drop in a new photo and a few words each day. You can read more about DPI, PPI and resolution for scrapbookers to make sure your pages print perfectly. Keeping a daily diary helps you focus on the little details that often get forgotten by January. Creating 25 pages might seem like a lot of work, but using the same basic layout for every day will speed up your process.

Page ideas

You do not need a formal family portrait to make a good holiday layout. Everyday activities often make the best scrapbook subjects. Focus on the simple tasks that make up your holiday routine.

Here are a few page ideas for your December album:

• Decorating the tree
• Baking holiday treats
• Hanging the lights
• Attending school concerts
• Wrapping gifts
• Setting the table
• The mess after opening gifts

You can also document the mail you get from friends and family. Photograph the Christmas cards you receive and add them as a collage on a single page. This saves physical space while keeping the memories intact. If you need help arranging multiple photos, learn how to use digital scrapbook page templates to speed up your process. Capturing the messy living room or the kitchen counter covered in flour tells a more honest story about your holiday.

Photographing lights

Holiday lights are a classic scrapbook subject, but they can be tricky to capture. Taking photos in complete darkness often results in blurry images or harsh contrast. The bright bulbs wash out the details of the house or tree.

Lights look best photographed at dusk, when there is still some light in the sky. This balance allows the camera to pick up the glow of the bulbs while keeping the background visible. You get a rich blue sky that contrasts nicely with warm yellow or bright multicolored lights. Try taking a few photos right after the sun goes down. You can then use these pictures as great background images for your layouts. A slightly lighter sky also helps your camera focus better on the actual shapes of the light displays.

Traditions to record

Your photos tell part of the story, but the words complete the memory. Holiday scrapbook pages are a good place to write down the details of your celebrations. Writing a few sentences helps future generations understand what made the season special.

When you sit down to write your journaling, consider these topics:

• Family traditions you repeat every year
• Favorite holiday recipes
• Who visited during the month
• The gift everyone talked about

If you struggle to write on your pages, you can find more scrapbook journaling prompts and ideas to help you start. Adding a recipe card or a short story about a funny family moment makes your digital scrapbook much more personal. You might also want to record the weather, the music you listened to, or the holiday movies you watched.

Free Christmas supplies

You can find plenty of digital supplies to decorate your holiday pages right here at Free Digital Scrapbooking. Our Christmas section includes materials made specifically for December projects. You can mix and match different items to suit your style.

Our Christmas papers, the Christmas Cheer Kit, the Merry and Bright quick page and our printable gift tags are made for December. When you download these files, you will notice they come in two formats. The digital papers are JPG files, which keeps the file size manageable. The elements and alphabets are transparent PNG files. The transparent background lets you place them over your photos and papers without any ugly white boxes. You can read more about PNG vs JPG: which file format to use if you are curious about how these files work. Sorting your new files into folders by theme will help you find exactly what you need when you sit down to create.