• Your scrapbook is a blank slate for your film.scrapbook grunge frame image by pdtnc from Fotolia.com
  
  Scrapbooking is a popular hobby, so much so that arts and crafts stores dedicate full aisles to supplies, and some new retail stores focus entirely on scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is many things to many people, but mainly involves keeping track of life's moments by affixing photos and mementos in large keepsake albums. Because scrapbooking revolves around photographs, an unusual way to enhance the uniqueness of an album is by focusing on the film itself.
  
  

Timeline

• If you have a shoebox full of film negatives from a family member, child or even a pet's life, you can use a scrapbook to turn the photos into a recorded time line. Instead of placing film haphazardly into the scrapbook, take some time to separate the negative images from when the family member was the youngest, and then order them up to the most recent images. Add them into the scrapbook with notes on the date of birth, place of birth (if this information is known) and then add captions below the negatives to detail the history of the images. If possible, add in scraps of newspaper from those times or print out information from the Internet. You can also use newspaper as a unique background for the pages of the scrapbook. The scrapbook will then serve as a way to reflect on the person's life and discover memories from long ago.
  
  

Photo Sequencing

• Because it can be hard to tell what's on a negative unless you're holding it directly in front of a light source (impossible with the negative glued onto a page), consider telling a story by printing photos from the negatives, then using both in your scrapbook. For example, if you have a strip of photos from a day out in the park with your dog, print a few photos (three to five) from the negative strip, then glue the negative to the top of the page and place the photos below. Tilt the photos at an angle for a creative look or place them end-to-end for a streaming pictorial of what's in the negatives. Another idea is cutting apart each negative (taking care to cut on the separating blank strip and not the actual picture itself), then place it below the actual picture in the scrapbook. It shows the significance of creating the picture from the negative, and the whole photo development process.
  
  

Deco Edges

• Images are the focus of a scrapbook, so help them stand out more from the long, brown strips of negatives by trimming and decorating them with special, scalloped scissors. (Note that if you cut the film in any way, it may become impossible to generate printed photographs from them later.) Art scissors have a variety of serrated edges that leave attractive edges around the strips. For example, you can snip negatives from your beach vacation with scissors that leave an edge that looks like the ocean's waves. Other blades create jagged and pointy edges (like spikes), and there are even some that will cut/punch holes or other designs directly onto the negatives. Instead of the traditional scrapbooking methods of using themed patterned paper and cutouts to frame your film, cut the negatives themselves with specialty edges so they really stand out on the page.