One Year Baby Album V2.0

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.