A food scrapbook without scissors.

Paper or phone

Paper scrapbook, a general app, or PlateDiary?

Paper wins on texture and the smell of glue. If you love it, keep both: make pages in the app and print them for the book.

The pieces

Cut-outs instead of scissors.

Snap the table and each dish and drink is cut out on your phone, with a clean die-cut edge, filed under the night and place. That pile of pieces is the hard part of any scrapbook, and it’s done before dessert.

Albums

Albums for a trip, a person or a craving.

Heart a save to add it to Favorites, and tag it with anything you like — both free. With Premium, build collections of your own, or smart collections you make by typing a sentence. A collection or tag page holds up to 200 saves, with a backdrop of a colour, a photo or a pattern.

Ephemera

Keepsake cards from the moment.

In Share Studio (Premium), the night’s own details become paper-style keepsakes: a receipt, a ticket stub, a postmark, a film date stamp, an “Nth time” rosette, your stars, a sticky note and a companions tag. Studio designs save themselves, collection and tag designs included, and wait in the Studio saves gallery on your You tab.

Play

Play with your page.

A scrapbook page in PlateDiary isn’t frozen. Turn on Play and the saves become objects: tilt your phone and they tumble, shake it, grab one and toss it. Four modes are free — Tumble, Float, Water and Magnet. Premium adds six games to claw, launch, catch, tap, burst and slice your saves.

Ideas

Ten food scrapbook page ideas.

• Our first ten dates, one dish each.
• One dish, every city: the same order in Seoul, Paris and Mexico City.
• Grandma’s birthday lunches, year by year.
• A ramen passport — one cut-out per shop, with a stamp.
• The trip, told only in breakfasts.
• Cafés of one semester.
• Things we’d order again (and the one we wouldn’t).
• Every scoop of gelato on one summer holiday.
• Desserts by month — twelve cut-outs, one page.
• Every table with Jo, from the first coffee onward.

Keep these

Ephemera worth keeping from a meal out.

Paper scrapbookers already know: the bits around the food carry half the story. Photograph or pocket these:

• The receipt, especially a handwritten one.
• A business card or matchbook from the counter.
• The chopstick sleeve, sugar packet or coaster with the logo.
• A photo of the specials board — it changes tomorrow.
• The wine or beer label, peeled or photographed.
• A fortune from the cookie, if the night came with one.

Paper

Paper scrapbook? Print it.

Export any design as a picture and print it at home or at a photo counter, then glue it into a real book. A few tips: export the 3:4 or 4:3 format for standard photo paper, print on matte so pen writes on it, and trim a thin white border by hand for a proper die-cut feel.