My little guy has a new favorite bedtime story: The Noisy Counting Book.  The young boy in this story tries to fish over the sounds of nearby frogs, ducks, birds, fish, crickets, & mosquitoes.  But the thing that makes the story fun, is onomatopoeia.  I know…you are thinking, “On-a-mat-a-WHAT?”
Onomatopoeia.  A word that is onomatopoeic makes a sound, when you say it, like the thing it is describing: swish, clatter, rattle, bang, boom, flush, ratchet, kiss, buzz, click, whoosh, squeak, quack, tinkle, pitter-patter, plop, babble, whack, gush, chomp, chirp, snap, fizzle, clang, thump, puff, clank, moo, hiss, roar, pop…
Adding onomatopoeic words to your journaling makes it more interesting to read:
*Joe’s hammering nearly drown out our voices. vs The BAM! BAM! BAM! of Joe’s hammering nearly drown out our voices.
*1 big frog croaked vs 1 big frog said GA-DUNK!  (my teenage daughters argue that frogs don’t say GA-DUNK, but to a nearly 2 year old, that word is hysterically funny)
Try it! The next time you are working on the journaling or title of your layout, think about how the memory sounded.  Can you find a way to convey that sound using an onomatopoeic word?  Make the sound out loud.  THAT’s the word you are looking for.  (It might be a real word…like the ones above.  Or it might be a made-up word…like GA-DUNK!)
I used onomatopoeia in the title of this layout:

I’d love to see how you use onomatopoeia in your scrapbooking!