Planning a trip? Amid all the flurry of choosing a destination, making reservations and packing your bags, don’t overlook preparations for your vacation scrapbook. It’s guaranteed to turn memories of that special journey into a priceless keepsake.

Most suitcases are equipped with extra zippered flaps too slim to hold anything bulky. Earmark this space for those odds and ends every traveler automatically accumulates.

Jane Edwards

Author of:

Travel Writing In Fiction and Fact

Don’t throw anything away. Years from now, a pair of ticket stubs can activate a magical memory of a Shakespearean performance at Stratford-on-Avon. Scalloped paper coasters advertising Guinness Stout conjure up visions of a singing pub in Killarney. And a menu featuring haggis and cock-a-leekie brings to mind a gala Scottish banquet.

Those items and dozens of others crowd the pages of an oversized scrapbook I created after our first trip abroad, a motor coach tour of the British Isles in the summer of 1969. We seldom bother hauling out the screen and projector to view the slides Dick shot that year. But looking through the scrapbook makes it seem as though it just happened yesterday.

I soon substituted albums with pages protected by plastic overleafs for the old-fashioned bound scrapbooks. All but one of these are still in good condition. That heartbreaking exception contains badly faded color prints from a Mediterranean cruise we took the children on. These days I’m careful to choose albums guaranteeing acid-free paper. As an extra precaution I encase negatives in plastic archive holders, clearly marked by trip and date, and store them in a separate looseleaf binder.

After each journey we have our film developed at a store offering double prints. That way I can compile a regular photo album with one complete set of prints, while using the duplicates as collages and accents in the scrapbook. Trimming the snapshots to focus on faces gives the pages a casual, light-hearted look. No need to ask if we had a good time!

Postcards sometimes contribute to the albums by supplementing our amateur snapshots with unique views available only to professionals--like the Trevi Fountain without a busload of tourists standing in front of it. Wonderful, inexpensive shots of The Hermitage we bought in St. Petersburg have Cyrillic writing stamped in gold across the tops, adding a delicious flavor of Russia to that page.

The first rule of vacation scrapbooking is to bring home everything. Try to get duplicates of the daily programs handed out on cruise ships, and an extra copy of the shore excursion booklet. That way, both sides of each important page can be displayed. Art prints from the Left Bank, theatre playbills, a diagram of the temples on the Acropolis, pressed flowers from a Hawaiian lei, the fancy paper fan bought on a gaspingly hot day in Seville—oh, what memories they conjure up!

Notes jotted in a journal can keep once-in-a-lifetime experiences vivid. Write down names before they fade: your Alaskan kayaking guide; that huge Dutch flower auction house; the Venetian café where the waiter suddenly burst into song.

Trivial incidents often stand out as the highlights of a trip. On vacation, take five minutes each night to write out a summary of the day’s events. Later, when you sit down at home to assemble your scrapbook, use those notes to personalize its pages. Two of mine—from different trips, of course: "Hiking down the Tower of Pisa was more work than climbing up!" and "Snow roofs our cabin at Yellowstone—in July!"

Fabulous memories. Relive them again and again as you riffle through your vacation scrapbook.