• Men and women who serve in the Coast Guard risk their lives every day to keep our coasts and nearby seas safe. If you'd like to show your appreciation for their service to our country, one idea is to make them a scrapbook of their personal mementos and photos.
  
  

Search and Rescue

• Create a scrapbook that highlights the Coast Guard's search and rescue operations. Your scrapbook background can be blue to reflect the ocean, then place pictures over it. This theme should look like the recipient has an ocean of memories to be rescued. Include photos or cutouts of rescue boats on the sides of the pages to tie everything together. You may want to include a lighthouse for added effect. A nice tip for layering titles and pictures is to have a transparency title. This way you can paste the title in front of the pictures without blocking parts of them.
  
  

Lighthouse Operations

• Another great scrapbook idea for members of the Coast Guard is to highlight their lighthouse operations. On the cover of the scrapbook you should have a photo of a lighthouse and of the Coast Guard member. On the inside of the book you need two drawings of a lighthouse glued to each other on the sides. Using a paper cutter, cut squares into the lighthouse drawing, be careful not to cut the squares completely out, because they will need to open like little window flaps. After your flaps have been cut paste the recipient's photos behind them. When the flaps are closed the page should look like a complete picture of a lighthouse, when the flaps are flipped open they should reveal the photos.
  
  

Anchors Away

• Create a scrapbook that revolves around the idea of anchors. You can have a picture of a huge anchor on the cover page and a picture of an anchor submerged under water on the next page. Add photos to the pages around the anchor images. For the third page, it might be that the anchor is now lifted so you can have a picture of a huge ship with the anchor hoisted up. The person receiving the gift will enjoy looking at the pictures, and also have fun anticipating what the next anchor image will be in the scrapbook.