Making a paper bag scrapbook is inexpensive, fun, and easy to do. You end up with an album in which you can have public pages decorated as well as pockets for your hidden journals or keepsakes. You can use both the inside and outside of your paper bags when using them to make a scrapbook.

Here is how:

How to make a paper bag album

First gather your paper bags. You will need one bag per page. Ordinary brown paper lunch bags are fine, but you can use any paper bag as long as they are the same size. The size of the bags will determine the size of the pages and pockets in your album.

Now stack your paper bags evenly on top of each other with the edges facing the same direction. Then, join the closed ends of the bags (on the left) so that the open edges of the bags end up on the right side of your scrapbook to form the pockets. These will be your secret compartments.

You can then bind your bags into an album in a variety of ways, such as with book binding rings, punching holes and tying the bags together with thread, tape, twine or wire, using leather cording, stapling, sewing, using book binding glue . etc.

Now you’re ready to decorate your pages with cardstock and designer paper or whatever else you’d like. Embellishments and papers can completely cover paper bags, making it hard for someone looking at your finished scrapbook to tell what you used to make the pages. Alternatively, you can make the paper bags a feature of your work and let parts of them show through.

using the pockets

The secret compartments in a paper bag album allow you to fit a lot of things inside. You can choose to include some hidden journals. In this case, you can write your journal on cardstock and slip it into one of the bags without adding any obvious way to get it out. People looking at your album may only notice and pull out those invite-only inserts. You could even add some punched holes and taping to the edges of your pockets to make sure items you want to stay concealed do.

I like to use the compartments for many things. If I want people to take items out of pockets, I add label borders to my inserts and tie something like ribbon to the labels, allowing the ends to trail

of the pockets as an invitation to look beyond. Sometimes I add extra images to tags like this so the viewer can handle them separately.

There are so many ways to use pockets. Imagine making a scrapbook of your favorite recipes. You can display a picture of your dish on the public page and have the recipes on tags in your pockets, just waiting for the cook to take them out and use! You can also add other memories to your paper bag album. Burn songs, poems or stories about your discarded pages onto a DVD and store it in one of the pockets.

Some people have printed emails or special letters and placed them inside their pockets. Keep pouches of special items inside pockets. For example, make a baby album and keep a decorated cellophane bag containing baby hair from its first cut in one of the pockets.

You can include items such as movie tickets, concert schedules, reports, awards, certificates, or trophy ribbons with ease in a paper bag album. Since the cost of making one is so low, you can make as many paper bag albums as you like. They also make excellent gifts for Christmas or birthdays. Your paper bag album can contain as many secrets as you want!