For Christmas two years ago I created a scrapbook for my wife and daughter that chronicled their first year in the United States (they immigrated from Kenya, via Australia, just before Christmas in 2003). The process involved just what you might expect — buying an album and an assortment of non-acrylic materials such as brushes, stickers, construction paper, etc.; selecting and printing out dozens of (digital) photos; and then figuring out a way to put it all together in some sort of artistic — or perhaps not so artistic, in my case — fashion.

I’d hoped to get to some other scrapbooking projects, including one that makes use of all the newspaper clippings I’ve saved from the Red Sox’ World Series championship in October 2004, but the sheer time required — the Christmas scrapbook took me at least 30 hours — has always stopped me in my tracks.

I may have just found the solution — Scrapblog.com.

Over the weekend my daughter and I gave this new Web 2.0 scrapbooking tool a try, and it worked like a dream. We pulled in a bunch of photos from my Flickr collection and then added Scrablog’s own backgrounds and stickers.

A few hours later, voila: Amani is born. Click the “Slideshow” button for a full run-through of all the slides.

Most of the work is my daugther’s, in fact. She picked up Scrablogging straight away, as you might expect of a “digital native.”

Scrablogs allow commenting and tagging, and they come with an RSS feed. They can also be embedded into blog posts (though the 770 x 600 dimensions would blow out the design of this blog if I did that here) and MySpace profiles.

Scrapblog is still in beta, but an upgrade is coming soon. New features will include additional options for photo editing, embedded streaming video, and the ability to print out a Scrapblog.

Here’s a video tour from Scrapblog that show’s what’s coming:

For those who are digitally inclined, scrapbooking has just become a whole lot easier. Another Christmas scrapbook for my family may just be on the way after all.

Technorati Tags: Scrapblog, Scrapblogging, scrapbooks, scrapbooking, Amani

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