February 2, 2009

The Reason for My Absence

Some of you may have noticed that I didn't blog much at all last week. I didn't intend to take a break, I just got caught up in a project. I tend to focus very much on one thing at a time and neglect everything else. Hopefully I'll post more this week - and clean my house!
My sister is having a baby boy, due in late May. This is her first child, and he was very much a surprise. I thought that making something for her would help her feel a bit better about becoming a mom. My only crafting is scrapbooking, so I made her a scrapbook/baby book for her son's first year. She is decorating the nursery in Noah's Ark.

Cover page - I left spaces for her to journal things throughout the book.

I found the perfect embellishments for this page after I had finished the page. Don't you hate when that happens? I seriously debated about redoing the page, but I hated to waste scrapbook supplies.
There are actually several shower pages in the book. I don't know how many showers she is having, or how many gifts she will receive. I left some of the pages blank so that she can just list who gave what if she doesn't have enough pictures. I also included a space for invitations.
Obviously after baby is born. Did you know that I couldn't find any stickers or other embellishments for labor and delivery? That is definitely an overlooked area.
The page on the left is for recording height and weight, while the page on the right is for immunizations. I wanted to do something cute and clever for the height and weight, but I couldn't make anything that was also easy to read at a glance. I covered the page on the right with contact paper so that she can slide the sheet out of the page protector and tape the immunization record directly onto the page. I figure it will be harder to lose the record that way. ;)
Baby's first bath page. Somewhere, I have a picture of my sister getting her first bath. I'm going to unearth the picture and stick a copy of it in the book.
Two of the six Christmas pages. This page is my favorite. I made the photo spaces look like presents to coordinate with the present background paper. I'm going to do a page like this for BB's book as well.
First tooth page and dental chart. I'll be posting on how I drew this dental chart on Wednesday.
I didn't know how this page was going to look when I started it, but I really like the color scheme.
My sister likes to take black and white pictures, so I gave her a few pages to do just that. Is it just me, or does everyone look better in black and white pictures?
I'm betting that the kid will walk before he's one, but you really never know. BB started walking literally a few days before his first birthday.
First birthday pages. It's impossible to know what the birthday theme is going to be just yet, so I went with bright colors. I figure Sesame Street, Thomas, and Curious George will all go with these colors.
Aren't you glad I didn't make you look at all 46 pages? Now that I've done this book, I really want to work more on BB's book, which has been sadly neglected. A question - if you scrapbooked before you had kids, do you just incorporate the kid pages into existing scrapbooks, or do you have a separate book for each kid? I have a special pregnancy scrapbook and a baby's first year scrapbook, but I haven't been able to decide what to do now. Also, does anyone absolutely love their scrapbook supply organizer? I have limited space, so I have to keep my stuff packed up when it's not in use. I need to find some way to organize things without having them out in the open. There's so many products out there that I'm stumped as to what works the best. Suggestions?

5 comments:

  1. Your sister is a lucky lady and you are very talented.

    I have seen many professionally done ready to use scrapbook pages that look nowhere near as creative or aesthetic as yours.

    Did you search for labour/delivery themed scrapbooking stuff online? I stumbled across a site once that sold jewellery shaped like women giving birth. You just never know what's out there till you look.

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  2. Chimera: no, I didn't think to look on-line. I guess I was too obsessed with getting done quickly :) I now must go check Google and see what turns up!

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  3. Heather that is one beautiful scrapbook. As one "scrapper" to another I know how much work it was. I wish that I had known about scrapbooking when my kids were little but I only discovered it about 6 years ago. So I am WAYYYYY behind.

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  4. Ummm...Anja is 1 1/2 and I haven't started her first one yet...you wanna come do mine?

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  5. That is the COOLEST gift ever! I wish that you were my sister!

    I have a friend that makes several versions of scrapbooks - she makes ones for each year of her children's lives for them to take when the leave home some day, but then she also has a family book for each year so that she'll have some to keep too.

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