Chris Bees writes, I feel trapped by all the memorabilia I have saved. I'm worried I'm forgetting to include something and I don't want to spend hours searching for something I may or may not have saved for my scrapbooks. Let's go. Can you help Chris Bees solve the mystery of memorabilia? Of course I can. Let's look at three things. Storage ideas that include memorabilia, products that can help showcase it, and then a project that puts it all into action. memorabilia comes in all shapes and sizes, and as scrapbookers we often have a tendency to cling to pretty much everything just in case it might be perfect for a page. When the bill for dinner comes with a business card, we save it. When we buy tickets, we pay the surcharge to get a real ticket rather than some scannable code that comes in an email. At a wedding, we keep the invitation, the order of service, the escort card with our name, the menu, the packaging to the favors, and quite possibly the monogram napkins. All these things seem perfect for scrapbook, but suddenly we have more stuff than is easy to catalog. We need a system. Start with the small memorabilia first. Flat items that are 4x6 are smaller, which often includes ticket stubs, postcards, receipts, and business cards. Anything that is the same size or smaller than your photos can be added to your photo storage. Once you've printed the pictures for an event, keep the memorabilia right then the same place like the ticket stubs in this photo file. 4x6 size journals are great for keeping notes and when they are filled, you can add them straight to the photo file too, so all your journaling details are right to hand. Or use items designed to hold photographs like the photo packaging, like the envelopes that your prints come in, and sort all your memorabilia by month or event and put that in with your pictures. If you don't keep printed photos filed, but prefer to print your pictures as you scrap, the easiest thing to do is photograph your memorabilia. This serves two purposes. First, it may be easier to let some memorabilia go if you have a photograph of it since you could always print the photo. But if you keep the memorabilia, you won't forget that you have memorabilia to scrapbook with those photos. Because when you go to print the pictures, there will be a picture of the memorabilia right there in the same folder, a perfect reminder to go get your memorabilia storage and find what you need. That storage could be a file box, folders, plastic bags, or envelopes. It may be easiest to sort your memorabilia by month or event. These options that you store all sizes of memorabilia, so you're not limited to just the size of your photographs. One last idea works for those of you who have your pages organized in albums in a way that lets you plan roughly where each layout will go, even if you haven't created it yet. If you keep your albums by year, for example, you know that the tickets to from 1995 will go in the 1995 album. Or if you keep them by person, you know the ribbon from the Homecoming Corsage will go in your daughter's high school album. Or if you keep them by theme, you know that your camping mat goes in your travel album. If any of those work for you, then sort your memorabilia with your albums and some empty page protectors to hand. Find the right spot and add the memorabilia to the album just sitting in an empty page protector. You can use it on a layout when you get there and if you decide not to but you still want to keep the memorabilia, tuck it in between the two pages in that page protector. And maybe it will be found years from now as its own little hidden secret. There are plenty of products that can help keep memorabilia in check for scrapbooking. Take your prettiest memorabilia and add it to a shadow box from 7 Gipsies. They come in different sizes and colors so you can find one that's a good match to both your home and the memorabilia you want to display. This shadow box includes a cutting of netting from a bridle veil, scraps of ribbons from wedding stationery and a wedding favor with photos and glittering numbers, quick to create with a shadow box ring. For inside your albums, try divided page protectors. They come in a variety of sizes and layouts and you can fill them with any combination of photos, memorabilia, journaling cards and mini scrapbook pages. Look for options for American crafts and duplug in the two piece store or contain your memorabilia on a full page by using a pocket or an envelope. If you love the letter press greeting cards in the two piece boutique but would really rather help keep that cuteness for yourself rather than send it away, why not pick a card that matches your page and write your journaling inside the card. Then use the envelope to hold your memorabilia from that event. There are plenty of options for different colors, sizes and shapes of just envelopes in the two piece store as well. Or consider conquering your memorabilia as you go. With a smash book, ditto journal or an American crafts day book, you can just glue things into the book as they cross your path in life. No more saving it all up for something else, for some page you may or may not make in the future. Just glue it right into the book and stick it in a pocket and on you go. It's a different way of scrapbooking that keeps all your memorabilia in one place. And if you want something small you can carry with you throughout the day, the smallest size in the Amy Tangerine Day book is your best bet. It will fit in your handbag while that the least of trouble. But Glitter Girl works best when she can show you something from start to finish, so let's make something. Hands up if you already have memorabilia to kick off the New Year, perhaps even starting with the New Year's party. This scrapbook page will start a 2012 album and it includes one photo and two pieces of memorabilia, a concert ticket and the paper streamers from the New Year party popper. To create the page I'm using butterflies from pebbles, gems from Lime and Die, ribbons from Amy Tangerine, stickers from Lv. Yellow Bicycle, letters from October noon and American Crafts, papers and fabric paper by Amy Tangerine for American Crafts, then the two things that matter with memorabilia. Wash your tape to hold things in place and some pockets and envelopes from this new set by Amy Tangerine. These are great for journaling and all sorts of memorabilia and you get several sizes in a pack. I'm going to use one big and one small pocket. The cloud paper will be my background, so the branding strip needs to go from that. Then I cut the chevron fabric paper to 8x8 to form a central space on my layout. To add color, I cut a 12x4 strip of hot pink pattern paper and a pretty green border with a big scallop border punch. That will go below the hot pink strip and those three pieces are ready to attach to the background. The fabric paper already has adhesive on the back so it's important to get it in a right place before laying it on the background. Now also at the memorabilia, the large pocket is the right size to hold the concert ticket and the small envelope is flexible enough to hold the paper streamers. I'll attach the two pockets either side of the photo so the photograph is the focal point right in the middle. The blue of the picture will coordinate with all that blue in the background paper. Except when I started to adhere the pink pocket, I realized it would be on top of pink paper. The shades are so similar, it makes it hard to see the edges of everything and it metals the design. But it's easy to fix. Adding a die cut in another color, like this gray printed doily, means I can add the pink pocket over the top and still have a layer in a contrasting color separating the pink paper from the pink pocket. Disaster-verted and the doily is quite cute too. Washi tape is also useful with memorabilia as you can use it to stick things to the page without it being too permanent or leaving funny adhesive dots on your memorabilia. But since everything is tucked away in the pocket here, I'm just going to use it as a design element in three places, one on each pocket, then a third at the top of the chevron box. Those three then make up a triangle with the focal point photo in the middle, perfect for balancing embellishment without overwhelming what's important. So let's embellish a bit more then by keeping things to those same three places. I'm starting with short lengths of ribbon that match the blue background paper. Just run adhesive on the back and press the ribbons into place. It turns out glitter girl is rather fond of butterfly embellishment and although these are not from the same collection, the blue and the craft butterflies seem like a good match. I'll place one on each of the three embellishment points using the larger butterflies next to the memorabilia pocket. Of course, some sparkle helps too. I'll add a long strip of blue rhinestones to the cluster without the blue ribbon for balance and then just a few of the blue gems to the other two groupings. These stickers are from a winter collection but I like how the colors match. Unfortunately, they're just too big and they don't fit the scale of the embellishments I've already added, so I'll save them for another day. How about some letters? Something needs to be glittery, so these are glitter foam figures in the Ecclare style by American Crafts. It comes in other colors too including a pretty green. The smaller letters are mini-market stickers by October afternoon. Unfortunately, they are not glittery. Please forgive me. The thing about New Year's Eve scrapbook pages, do you put the last year or this year as the date? I've taken to writing welcome with the year to make it clear and the branding strip from the background paper has a little box that says hello friend. Cutting away the second word and adding some number stickers, the layout can now say hello 2012 and all is clear with the calendar. With the addition of a journaling card and some splashes of paint, glitter girl calls this mission accomplished and those first pieces of memory I'll be for this year are definitely in check. Join us next week for the continued adventures of GlitterGout and the ongoing mysteries of the scrapbook are behind the mask at 2pzannabucket.com .