My journey into the year of the babies began with a one year baby album. Now, I have made them before but they were mini albums that were based on a template I received in a class years ago. It was a class I took at Scrap-a-faire many moons ago. You can see my post here . I love making that book. Did it take time? Sure. Did like it? Yup. So why mess with changing it? Because I love a challenge. Well to be honest, I love a challenge when it is over. During the challenge, I whine, complain and think it is a mistake.
So for this album I decided to make a full size 12X12 album, two page spread per month and title page. Now this was for a math teacher so let's do the math, shall we? Rozette wants to make an album for her daughter's geometry teacher. She decides to make two pages per month and also a title page. How many layouts will Rozette make?
12 months X 2 layouts = 24 layouts 24 layouts +1 title page = 25 layouts in total
Really Rozette? You are going to do 25 layouts in one month. Are you crazy? Are you insane? Yes, yes I am. I didn't think of it in those terms. I think if I had, I would have never started and just bought a pack of cute boy themed onesies and called it a day.
So I decided to do 25 boy theme pages and use no bling or pink or ribbons (okay maybe just a little ribbon). Now this is hard for me. As you will discover, I love bling. I love sparkly things and all things pink. So I pretty much took on mission impossible with this album.
There were a few things I wanted to stay the same with this book that I used in the mini albums.
1) Make most of the picture spots 4X6 or 5X7. Non-scrappers can easily print pictures those two sizes at any drugstore.
2) Use three or four templates for the whole album
3) Leave journaling spots to mark down milestones
I am not a hoarder but I must admit, I rarely throw anything away from my scrapbook stash and I don't care if I haven't used if for years...it stays. So I had these template creators that I bought from Walmart back in 2007. I was a new scrapbooker and needed guidance. I never used them but I kept them.
Thank goodness I kept them because they came in handy.
Once I had a few basic templates, I was able to repeat them three or four times. They were not all exactly alike but the templates served as a jumping off point for each page.
I used my Cricut for all the titles. I used Cricut Craft Room for the first time and I must say I was quite impressed. My only gripe is that I had to insert each cartridge into my Expression in order to cut. Years ago I bought a Gypsy because I didn't want to switch out cartridges and I didn't like want to be changed to a computer when I craft. I am on a computer all day and I just don't want to spend more time on it than I need to spend. But I must admit, for a computer based program, I was pretty happy.
Yes I will admit I have caved and I am just as crazy about banners as other scrappers. So I put a few in this one. The one over the picture placement is not glued down so that mommy can slip her picture on there. And remember I said I only put a little ribbon in the album? I just could not resist.
You see what I mean? It is too cute! So cute that I went back to Hobby Lobby and bought it in blue, pink and yellow. They also have little teddy bears that I used on the album. I adhered them with my Xyron small sticker maker. If you don't own one, I highly remcommend buying one with a 1/2 coupon from Michaels or Hobby Lobby. (FYI never pay more than 60% for anything at Hobby Lobby or Michaels.) Be patient, what you want will eventually come on sale 40% off or it won't be on sale and you can use your 40% coupon.
The last page I made was the first page, the title page. It was my first attempt at a banner title page. I got the idea from Kathryn from Life on the {Scrap}Beach. She made a baby mini album and she used banners for either the title page or for the card. I can't remember. I saw it on her Ustream channel. If you go to her blog you will see a link to her Ustream. And then you can spend a few days there because she does AMAZING work.
I used my cricut to cut the ltter, the scallops and the baby onesies.. Thanks for stopping by.
