Making the Ultimate Disney Photo Book Part 2 – Scanning Travel Mementos

Hi all! It’s time for Part 2 in my how to series: “Tips for Making the Ultimate Disney Photo Book”. If you missed Part 1 which discussed how to find the best Disney clip art and fonts, you can catch up via the link.

I also wrote another Disney post on my best tips to get those coveted character photos with Mickey (on a Disney cruise). (Did you like my photo with Mickey? My hubby was wondering when I had snuck away to get that photo…) That post was more about photo-taking tips rather than photo book tips, so I didn’t officially make it part of the series. But, if you’re going on or thinking about going on a Disney cruise, don’t miss my tips!

Anyway, moving on to the topic of this post – this post is about collecting mementos – in particular ephemera (or as my husband might call it – “collecting odd scraps of stuff that makes our luggage heavier going home.” Ephemera is just a fancy word for everyday scraps of paper meant for temporary use. When traveling, typical ephemera would be plane tickets, receipts, tags, postcards, maps, brochures, ticket stubs etc.

I always come back with a small bag of odds and ends I’ve saved from our trip and I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. I set the bag aside until I was ready to start sorting through it. Unlike in traditional scrapbooking where you can just paste these items onto the page, with digital scrapbooking you have to scan or take photos of the items you want to use.

I scanned the items at 300dpi in jpeg format and now they’re ready to go. If you’d like more details on scanning, check out my related post on incorporating non-photo elements into your photo book.

What kinds of things did I save and scan from our Disney cruise?

• Daily Itineraries – On Disney Cruise Lines, these are known as Personal Navigators –  the newsletters that your stateroom attendant leaves in your room each evening at turndown. They give the day’s full list of activities and include cute illustrations. I saved most of them. Not only could they be useful as backgrounds in my photo book, but they can help you jog your memory if you’re trying to add captions or narrative to your layouts;
• Map of Castaway Cay;
• Plane ticket stubs (it was Photo Book Baby’s first flight!);
• Ticket stubs and wristbands from our activities;
• Cruise ID cards (which features a cute Captain Mickey);
• Luggage tags (with Goofy on them);
• Postcards & Disney stationery (the ones they give you in your room and a couple that I bought);
• Cabin door hang tag;
• Photos taken with the characters by ship’s photographers;
• Child’s menu (there was a new themed one every night at dinner that featured cute illustrations, coloring pages, games, trivia etc.);
• Disney travel brochures

Most of these things have straight edges, so I don’t need to do much with them except perhaps trim or crop the scanned images, but the few items I have with rounded edges or irregular edges, I will likely do some editing to remove the white background and save them as.png files. For more on the differences between jpeg and png files, check out this post.

So, grab all those scraps and odds and ends you’ve been hanging onto from your last trip and memorialize them in your photo book!

Looking for the next part of this series? Check out Part 3 of the Ultimate Disney Photo Book here!