Scrap Girl

The third layout for this project is titled “Mama’s Princess”.  I used the same supplies used in the previous Daddy layout and added a poem on the pages.  It is simple and sweet and the poem is the best thing on the page, in my opinion.  It is from the “It Takes Two” line of vellum sticky sentiment poetry with the verse by Kimberly Rinehart.  It reads:

Dear little one, we never dreamed you’d be so beautiful…in all of the times we tried to imagine every last detail of who you would be, thru all of the nights we spent quietly thinking of how we would feel when we first looked at you, we patiently waited and silently wondered.  We hoped and we prayed and we tried to imagine… but we never dreamed you’d be so beautiful.  It’s great for summing up how a mother feels when she looks at her new child.

Since I didn’t have time today to put together another layout for the baby gift scrapbook, I thought I could give you some creative titles that would work for a baby album.  Some of them will work for a boy or girl album and some are more gender specific.  The album I’m working on is for an adopted child, so some of the titles need to be  tailored to fit their situation.  Some titles you could use would be:

• Love at First Sight or The Day We Met
• Big Brother or Big Sister Loves Me
• Daddy’s Angel
• I Love Mommy
• Mama’s Princess
• Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice
• So Blessed By You
• All in the Family
• Hugs & Kisses
• Worth the Wait
• It’s a “Grand” World (for grandparent photos)
• Welcome Home

These would be just a few ideas for good titles to add to your baby gift album.  If you don’t want to make your own titles with scrapbook products, another idea would be to print them out on your computer.  As you probably know, there are a million different types of fonts out there to choose from.  It would be a nice shortcut if you are limited on time and your album would still look terrific.

Hello fellow scrapbookers!  To keep you up to date, I’m working on a baby gift scrapbook for my cousin’s family who will be adopting their second child soon, we hope.  They do know it will be a girl, so bring on the girly papers and embellishments.  This second layout is called “Daddy’s Little Angel”.  The first picture is of the supplies I used.  These include paper from the DCWV Nursery Paper Stack, Provo Craft Alphabitties for the title, Fairy Princess stickers from Jone Hallmark, and pink brads.  The second picture is of the finished layout.  With the glare, it is hard to see the title in the picture, but you can get the basic idea.  It turned out really cute with the girly stickers.  I’m not a huge sticker fan, but the right ones sparingly can sometimes really make the page come out nice.

Here are a couple of pictures for the first layout I completed for the baby scrapbook gift.  The first picture is of the supplies I used:  the papers from the DCWV Nursery Paper Stack, some generic chipboard letters I found in the dollar bin at Target, a vellum sticker about daughters from the “Girls” Quotable Stack from DCWV, and some ribbon I had left over from other projects. 

The second picture is the actual layout created with the above items.  Remember I don’t have any photos to work with so I’m going to just create paper mattes for the pictures to be placed on at a later time.  The scrapbook gift is for a family who is adopting so I chose “Love At First Site” for the first layout title.  The title took the most time as I had to use glue dots for the chipboard letters.  It is a little tedious, but it looks nice when finished.  Otherwise, the whole 2 page layout took less than 15 minutes to put together. 

When you are starting to make a scrapbook for a gift, you can save yourself several trips to the craft store and some time and energy by coming up with a plan ahead of time.  What I have done for this baby book gift is bought the album, bought a coordinated paper kit and brainstormed some possible titles for pages(while watching T.V.).  Since this book is for my cousin’s family who is adopting, some of the pages will be adapted for that situation.  For example, one of the first pages may be titled “The Day We Met” or  “Love At First Sight” instead of “Coming Home” or “At the Hospital” or other birth-related titles.  There are books available to help you come up with titles if that process would slow you down or you get stuck.  I seem to have somewhat of a knack for coming up with catchy and funny titles so coming up with a list went fairly quickly.  Here is a picture of the album(it’s a girl) and the coordinating paper pack I got at the local craft store.

The scrapbook I will be making for a baby gift is an 8×8 inch album.  How you organize it depends on if you have prints to work with or not.  If you have prints to develop I would suggest getting prints in a matte finish to avoid any fingerprints being seen on pictures.  In my case I don’t have any prints so I will be placing paper mats on each page so that the recipient can then add their choice of photos to the page.  I have planned some titles for each page to help me out a little with the design.  For example, my first page will be sort of a title page with the baby’s name, date of birth, and in this case, date of adoption.  Since my cousin’s family is still waiting for the finalization papers and the baby isn’t adopted yet, I’m going to save this page for last until I get all of the final dates and information.  Moving on from there, I will do most of the album using two page layouts that will fit 2 photos on each page.  Tomorrow I will upload some pictures so you can see the album and coordinated paper pack I bought for the project to save myself some time matching papers.

If you are just getting into scrapbooking or looking to make a gift for someone you will need a few basic supplies.  A paper trimmer of some type will help you trim your paper to fit in your album and trim it in a straight line.  I don’t know about you but me + a regular scissors doesn’t usually equal a straight edge.  You will also need some sort of adhesive to stick your paper and pictures to pages.  There are so many different types out there.  Just about anything does the trick, but I would suggest a tape type adhesive to move you along the quickest.  I use a Herma Vario tab dispenser.  It works pretty well, but I’m always looking for better.  I would throw a regular scissors in your kit, for any really small trimming.  Last but definitely not least, I would pick a black marker with archival ink(meaning it will last) so you can jot sentiments and facts about your pictures.  There are a great many products out there, but these are the basics and you will be using them again and again.

You know how it is trying to find the perfect gift for someone?  You may even spend hours of your precious time online or at the mall looking.  Don’t waste any more time!  You can make a gift that will fit anyone you are looking for!  YES!  YOU CAN!  Even if you think you don’t have a creative bone in your body, you can do it!  There are many sizes of scrapbooks out there.  A 6X6 could work perfectly for a weekend trip idea or even a trip to the zoo or Grandma’s house.  You would only need 10-20 pictures to pull this off.  Grab some themed or colored cardstock from the local craft store and you are ready to go.

An 8×8 inch album could be used to make a baby book, which I soon will be doing for my cousin and his wife that are adopting.  Over the next few weeks I’ll post my progress on this so you can get some ideas.  I would also use an 8×8 book for something that your family does annually like summer vacations or holidays like Easter or Halloween.

The most popular size and the size to use if you take lots of pictures would be the 12×12 inch album.  These are also the most versatile allowing for 1-10 pictures per page, and maybe more if you plan it right.  I don’t think I would normally use this size for a gift unless it was an Anniversary, Wedding, or very special occasion album where you would have alot of pictures.  Of course the bigger the album, the more area to cover.  If you are a novice or beginning scrapper looking to make a gift, I would start with the smaller sizes or fun shaped mini albums.  The project will also go more quickly with a smaller album.  In order to make an kind of an album you would need some basic tools, some of which you probably have around your house.  Tomorrow’s blog will be about what I think should be in your basic tool kit, and it won’t take up much room!

I just got into digital scrapbooking a few months ago and it is amazing.  I did one project I will post a few pictures of it so you can see what I mean.  I would say the main advantage of digital is you can move and change things with the click of your mouse.  Once you get the hang of it–I would also say that it is a quicker way to document memories.  Also once you get a folder on your computer for digital papers and embellishments, you can use them over and over again.  You can also change the shades of colors of these papers to match your projects perfectly.

Now on the other side of things is your good old-fashioned paper scrapbooking.  If you are like me; even though you like digital–there is nothing like feeling the papers and other supplies in your hands.  I would say the biggest advantage to paper scrapping is the textures you get when layering papers and embellishments.  You can do that idea in digital, but it is not quite the same.  Another great thing is that you can preserve your personal handwriting on your pages.  One thing related to your actual pictures you are using is that you can see your prints ahead of time.  Sometimes when you are playing with pictures in digital, you might not be able to tell if an image is slightly blurred or gets a little distorted if you enlarge the image.

 I’d say whatever way you choose, I like both.  As long as you are preserving some precious memories, who cares which way you do it.  You could even mix the two methods together and alot of people do that and call it hybrid scrapbooking.  I don’t know–I think of plants or tomatoes when I hear that word, but there it is.

2008-10-22 

Who would have guessed that I would have my own blog?  Not me, that’s for sure.  Anyway here I am starting my own about my favorite hobby of scrapbooking.  I have been scrapping for about 10 years, ever since my first daughter was born.  She gave me a great reason to start this hobby and I’ve been into it ever since.  I think for now this will be a place to mull over some of my projects and hopefully get other input on what other people who love this hobby are up to.  I will have some funny stories to go along with the pictures I’m working on and hopefully inspire those who say, “I don’t have time for that,” or laugh it off and think it is a silly waste of time for people that have nothing better to do.  I actually feel bad for those folks because down the road it is going to be me that is grateful for the amount of time(no matter how great or small) I put into telling my family’s story, because it is my story, and it matters.  I have learned also from doing this hobby that photos and stories are the greatest things we have to keep the memories alive of those that go before us in life.  For when they are gone–what do we have left?  Great memories of our time shared with them!