Scrapbooking Baby

Yes guess what is coming up in the not so distant future? Yes, Christmas!! Now although baby’s first Christmas will be one of the only Christmas’s that your child won’t remember, it is one that you will never want to forget. But remember, memories fade and sometimes too quickly, so think about what you want to do in your scrapbooking baby layouts to capture this magical first Christmas.

Sometimes you can actually plan some memorable photo poses you would love to take photos of, this will often depend on baby’s age and mobility, if baby is only weeks old the props and positions will be far different than if baby is closer to 12 months old. One particular pose that is always a hit is a photo of baby with a Santa hat on, you know the bright red hat with the fluffy white trim, this always looks fantastic.

Another thing about Christmas layouts is the weather. Now as strange as that may sound, it depends what part of the globe you live on as to whether you are in winter or in summer. Will your layouts reflect that winter chill of ice and snow, big coats and blankets, or will it reflect hot summer days, cooling off in the pool or creek and eating ice cream?

Either way, you can make some lovely designed pages that star your baby and your family, it is such a wonderful time of year, when you can often get all the family together and get some wonderful photos of everyone, at the same time and in the same place. Make the most of it and snap away, you want to be able to put everyone into your scrapbooking baby album, because these are all the people and family who helped you celebrate your baby’s first Christmas, how special is that?

The traditional colours I seem to see used in Christmas layouts is usually red and green, they always work so well together. But don’t feel that you have to use these colours, you can use any colours that suit your photos, often colours like blue and white work particularly well if it’s a cold winter kind of theme. But honestly, any colours are fine, so long as they compliment your subject, then its fine.

And you are lucky, not only do the scrapbooking shops make plenty of embellishments aimed at scrapbooking baby, but they make thousands upon thousands aimed at Christmas, so the possibilities are just truly endless.

Some ideas for layouts at Christmas time are:

            Baby’s Christmas outfit

            Sitting on Santa’s knee, or maybe in mom’s arms with Santa

            Santa ‘Claws’, baby with the family dog or cat at Christmas

Christmas presents and the Christmas tree

Wrapping paper, usually this attracts baby more than the gift

Siblings at Christmas time, or perhaps cousins at Christmas time

Grandparents and Family at Christmas time

Christmas Eve

Oh the ideas just go on and on, Christmas is just such a wonderful time of year with a new baby, baby’s first Christmas is one of the most memorable events in your baby’s first year of life. Get excited, get into it, it is only a few short months away, so start collecting your embellishments now, and you could even start a new project of making a mini album for a present at Christmas. Grandparents often love receiving a special scrapbooking baby album that is all theirs to take home, they love bragging and showing off their grandchildren to their friends, so why not make them their very own personal album? It would be a lovely gift that I’m sure they would treasure.

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Where has the scrapbook journaling gone nowadays? I go to the local newsagents or book store and grab up the latest scrapbooking magazine, I eagerly thumb through those pages to get a quick look at what’s happening in this latest issue, and I notice, that probably half of the lovely layouts have no journaling! What’s going on? Have I missed something?

Years ago, scrapbooking was a celebrated form of storytelling, but without the need of the spoken word. Scrapbooking has always been about preserving memories (personal and family memories) and in modern days, it is mainly now about preserving our memories in the form of our photographs. That’s fine, I am all for scrapbooking, I love it, I have been doing it for years, but something is changing and I’m not convinced it’s for the better, in fact I know it’s not for the better!

A lot of people who are into scrapbooking, are becoming too consumed with all of the pretty little embellishments that you can buy now, all those fancy shiny little nick naks as I like to call them. Oh don’t get me wrong, they are beautiful, and I love using them too, but in moderation, please people, only use them in moderation. The art of scrapbooking is about the memories, the little bits of memorabilia, the photos, and the journaling! It’s not about how many nick naks or embellishments you can squeeze into your layouts, they are only there to compliment your layout and maybe add a little bit of flare or appeal. Don’t drown your layouts with them.

There are no excuses for pages that have no journaling, they are an incomplete page as far as I’m concerned and should not be in a scrapbooking album. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true, in 20 years time when someone looks at that layout, what will it tell them? Maybe that the people who were in it looked happy; looked like they were having fun somewhere? Maybe they were at a beach; maybe there were some children; whose children; which beach; who were they??

When I see a scrapbooking layout, I want to see journaling, it is a must! Ok so I always say there are no rules, except that the products you use need to be acid and lignum free and not in any way harmful to your photos, well, I now have a rule.

All Scrapbooking layouts must have journaling!! No ifs, buts or maybes!!

I don’t care if it’s only a few words, that’s all some layouts actually need, it does not need to be some huge 5 paragraph story, but it should cover the basics, the Who, When, Where, What and Why. Sometimes you can get away without the Why part, but I find the other four are absolutely imperative to your scrapbook journaling. Also you don’t have to put the journaling in a block format. You may have a beautiful layout of your baby and the family dog sitting on a blanket together in the back yard. If you wanted to keep the journaling very simple and to a minimum, you could place the date the pictures were taken at the bottom of the layout, and the title could be something like, “Molly and Jasper having fun in the sun” and perhaps another little die cut or wording, saying “backyard buddies” or something like that. It doesn’t say much and I would suggest still adding more, but if you really don’t like journaling, it is still better than nothing at all.It does tell us the Who, What, When and Where. The why sometimes isn’t important. On the other hand, you could write some specific journaling for that same layout describing what ‘Molly’ and ‘Jasper’ were up too, why they were out there on the blanket together.

Often as the years go by, we all forget the details, and what if we are not around to explain the layouts and what was going on? Don’t let your scrapbooks become worthless picture books, scrapbooking is a wonderful way to remember the past, include the journaling, give the pictures the story they deserve, preserve the whole memory, not half of it. Happy scrapping and whatever you do, don’t forget to include the scrapbook journaling in every layout you do.

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I have found a couple of interesting blogs that I thought you mind also find interesting.  There are quite a few little tips and ideas, so jump over and have a look if you want.

• Scrapbooking Themes or Ideas - Your baby scrapbooks theme. Another ideas of theme you can consider if you already or just having a baby. Especially for the first baby of your first son or daughter. It would be exciting if you could see baby’s grow phase day after day …

• Looking at Baby Scrapbooks - My daughters were looking at their baby scrapbooks. Author: BetnyBekah Keywords: kids scrapbooks Eden Addy Lin baby pictures Added: August 14, 2008.

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A couple of my friends asked me about some of the photos I have of my daughter in my scrapbooking baby album. They commented on how nice they are and how professional they look, but the funny thing is that they aren’t. So I thought I’d share a few tips with you that I have learnt along the way.

Well for starters you can’t go too far wrong when you are photographing a baby, they would have to be the cutest subject in the world wouldn’t they? I mean there are cute puppies and cute kittens, but then there are some not so cute puppies and kittens too, but come on, all babies are cute, and they are simply gorgeous!

So we know the subject is going to be as cute as a button but sometimes there are other little tricks and tip that can really make a photo stunning. And with digital photography nowadays, you can see your results immediately, no waiting to get that film developed and no fear of wasting film on mediocre shots. So that leaves us free to click away madly and edit the bloopers later.

So let’s get down to business and learn a few little tips for getting the best result out of our photo efforts for your scrapbooking baby album. This was a tip given to me by a friend of mine who said to me,

“Some of the best photos you will ever take will not be taken in direct light.”

Now I didn’t know what he meant first of all, until he explained to me. Now I will try to explain it to you and pass on this little piece of wisdom because it is just such a small thing, but it made a huge difference to my photos.

Ok, so when it comes to photographing kids and babies (well anyone actually), nothing beats natural light, not bright sunshine, not the flash, but just nice natural light. Sometimes out on a patio where you have lots of nice natural light is where you will capture some really nice shots, either that or if you are inside, pick a position near a big window or glass doors where lots of light fills that area of the room. So do you get the idea of what natural light is? The easiest way I can explain it is kind of like saying, when there is lots of light that comes from the sun, hence why it is called natural light, but when you cannot actually see the sun. It is not always possible to take photos this way, but it is something worth keeping in mind.

Now if you are taking photos outside, try if you can to avoid taking photos right on midday, this kind of light is very harsh and will not produce your best work. However if you are taking photos out in bright sunshine, take a moment to think about shadows, yes those things the sun causes. You will be amazed at the kind of shadows the sun can cause one your subjects face and those shadows don’t come from trees or buildings but from eyebrows and hair. So if you are taking a photo in the direct sun, the best thing you can do to try and get rid of the shadows on your subjects face, is turn the flash on. Sound strange? Well it’s true, have a go and try it, you will be surprised.

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What exactly do I mean? Well you’ll have to read on to find out.

This actually goes for all forms of scrapbooking, but it’s something that I quite often see in regards to scrapbook baby albums. There is just so much that we often want to cram into our albums, so many photos, and all of those beautiful embellishments they sell at the local scrapbooking store, and then there are little bits of memorabilia to squeeze in too, gee so many things, so little space!! Help where am I going to fit it all??

Well slow down and think it through, like I said at the beginning, more is not always better. Have you ever seen a piece of art, whether it be a scrapbook album layout, a painting, a picture, a mural, that just looks too busy? By that I mean, when you look at it, there seems to be too much going on in it, you are looking from top to bottom, left to right, and you still feel like you are missing part of it. Well it is an easy thing to do by mistake and sometimes it really distracts from what you are trying to achieve.

Most people presume that the best scrapbook baby layouts are those that have lots of the little trinkets and lots of photos and journaling, but sometimes it is in fact the total opposite. Don’t get me wrong the little embellishments do make a page look lovely, and you will use them, but some layouts look better when they are kept very simple and plain. That often depends on the photo itself, but especially if you are taking a photo of your babies tiny little hands or feet, or their perfect little face as they sleep, then these layouts often look fantastic if you keep the background of the layout very simple and plain, it can really make the photo itself stand out and take centre stage.

Especially if you are only using one photo in your layout, it is easy to find yourself feeling like you need to fill the page up with some form of decoration, as you may think it looks a little bare or empty. Not every layout in your scrapbooking baby album needs to be dressed up with embellishments and trinkets, try picking a photo or two that has a simple background in the photo and try to keep it simple. I find this works particularly well on black and white photos of you baby or toddler, it can look very classy. I did exactly this with some of my daughter’s photos, and a lot of people love that layout, including me.

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With a new baby, there are so many ideas, ideas, so many ideas……but lots of people still get stuck on what to do. Personally when it comes to scrapbooking baby, I tend to find there are just too many ideas and sometimes that can be just as bad as having no ideas at all. One of the best and easiest album ideas I can suggest for anyone who wants to scrapbook baby, is to do a Baby’s Firsts Album. Sound simple? Well that is because it is!!

When it comes to babies, there are hundreds of ‘firsts’ to consider, everything is a first for a baby. Now you can just compile a scrapbook baby album that has no set theme, which is often how I choose to do it, but some people really like everything to have a theme to it, so why not do a ‘firsts’ album? Gee the ideas are just rushing into my head at the moment, but the easiest way would be to start at the very beginning and work forward. So what would babies very first thing be???? Now that’s up to you, you could choose to start at baby’s birth, thus being baby’s first appearance, or is it? Perhaps the ultrasound would in fact be baby’s true first appearance? See it is up to you, some people prefer to start as far back as their wedding, there are no rules and if anyone tries to tell you there is, don’t listen to them!

It’s your album and therefore you get to have full creative control over it, you decide what goes in and what doesn’t, either way it will be a magnificent scrapbooking baby album that has been constructed with love and tenderness.

Some examples of ‘firsts’ if you are stuck are:

Your first glimpse of baby, the ultrasound photo

Baby’s first physical appearance, the birth

Baby’s first bath at the hospital and at home (2 different events)

Your first really good look over baby, their little fingers and toes

Baby’s first night at the hospital and at home (again 2 different events)

Grandma and Grandad’s first cuddle of baby

Baby’s first trip in the car

The list just goes on and on, everything is a first, and you can choose which firsts you want to record in your scrapbooking baby album.

One of the best things is that there is an unlimited amount of resources you will find, in the form of patterned paper, stickers, and embellishments; oh the list is just enormous. You can find these things in most scrapbooking stores and they will compliment any of your beautiful page layouts, if you choose to use them. Again, there are no rules, so you don’t have to use these commercial embellishments, you can stick purely to using card stock or papers to decorate your pages, and you can use the computer to do the journaling for your pages if you are not totally happy with your handwriting, or if you just want a different style of writing for your pages. Don’t feel as though you have to go out and buy all the little nic nak items to decorate your pages, some of the most beautiful pages are just really quite simple.

When you make a scrapbook baby album, you want people to see the photos and to read your journaling that’s what scrapbooking is all about, it tells a story, but without needing a story teller. Each page, each layout you complete, it should tell a story, without you having to say a word, the page will say it all, and some people seem to forget this, instead they try to make each page as pretty as they can, and unfortunately sometimes all of the prettiness actually ends up distracting you from the story and what the page or layout is really about.

Remember, your pages don’t need to be full to the brim and bursting at the seams, so to speak, sometimes more is not better.

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