Baby Scrapbook Layouts

With another new baby coming into the family I just knew I had to make up another scrapbook.

After all it's tradition!

I always find just enjoyment in making baby scrapbook pages.  There's such excitement surrounding a new baby and it's so fun to celebrate them!

I also tend to feel a bit nervous as I'm making each scrapbook.  I always have that niggling little fear that the recipients of the gift wont like it.  Maybe I'm choosing the wrong color scheme or maybe they'd rather receive a gift that's more useful; like a package of diapers and some onesies.

And yet I have always had my gifts received with such wonder and joy.

Here is a small sneak peak at the album I'm working on now:

 Expectant mother page!  I never used to try and include this page since I hated having my picture taken when I was pregnant but now that my boys are older I just LOVE those pictures.  This page allows for a nice 5x7 picture of mom and her belly.  I used lots of pinks and flowers and kept it girly knowing that even if the baby is a boy the theme fits along with mom and her personality. I found a sticker set that included the silhouette, the banner, the flowers, and the title.

Look Whooo's Here! I found this cute owl paper and I knew with the greens, grays and orange that it was perfect!  I used my Cricut for the title.  Cut two 4x6 rectangles for the photos and outlined them in a chalk marker making it look like stitching.  I used my Stampin Up! Punches to make the owl on the branch and completed the page with a cutout from a paper pack all about babies.  The colors on the cutout matched perfectly and gives the mom the right spot to list the baby's name, birth date, hospital, height and weight.  I embellished the cutout with some matching ribbons.

This page is perfect for a myriad of photos of the baby.  With a generic title like Beautiful Baby this page can be used for just about anything.  I stuck with greens and a variety of pastel colors so it works for boy or girl.

I just knew I had to use these darling stickers when I found them!  I always include a baby's first bath page and these were just too cute to pass up!  I couldn't decide which ones to use so I used them all!  I cut out tiny squares and mounted a sticker on each one.  I laid them down the side of the page and cut two larger rectangles for photos; topping the page off with the title sticker.

Nothing says nap time quite like a baby blanket.  I love this paper that evoked the feelings of a baby blanket and knew I wanted a sleeping baby page.  After all don't all babies look so adorable when they're sleeping?  I found the perfect title and rocking chair sticker to embellish the page and decided to put all the picture mounts right down the center of the page.

So far I'm very pleased with it all!

Linking Up With: Frugal Mommas Friday 

Fun with Field Trips

We go on so many field trips as homeschoolers and so many of our scrapbook pages are about those places we visit.  Here are a few:

Visiting Soar Indoors for the first time was so much fun.  Alec rocked the aerial course.  I just mounted each photo on green paper, laid them on the plaid background paper and cut out the title using the Cricut. 

Our zoo visit to the zoo in the fall was lots of fun.  I used Halloween themed paper and just trimmed an inch off each side of the paper then mounted it on some green.  I put each picture on orange paper and laid them out just a bit crookedly on the background paper.  I then used some sticker embellishments about animals to complete the page.

We had free tickets to Six Flags through their Read to Succeed program and we enjoyed a fun day at the park. With all the bright colors found in the pictures I knew I wanted a bright colorful background.  I found this printed paper and through it was just perfect.  I then mounted three of the photos on red and my focal picture (meeting Shaggy and Scooby!) on blue.  I rounded the outer corners on all the red mounted photos to give them some conformity and make the blue really stand out.  I finished up the page with a sticker embellishment.

Since Ian's favorite ride was the roller coaster this year and I only had three small photos I decided to try and mimic the feel of a roller coaster.  I found a simple pattern paper and used my pencil to trace a curvy line.  I cut it with the scissors and then trimmed the photos to fit inside the curves.  I cut out the title using my Cricut and found a large roller coaster sticker to finish it off.

Linking Up With: Together on Tuesdays,

Welcome New Baby!

Wanting to welcome a new addition into the family, I made his mother a scrapbook.

I often make blank scrapbook pages for new mothers.  I think it's the perfect gift to welcome a new baby.  Even if they are crafty it helps them out at a time when they would not have much time for crafts.

I try to make most pages with space for 2-3 4x6 photos and include generic titles.  Here's the book I put together (all for under $30; Including the scrapbook itself!) using Diecuts With a View Baby Boy paper stack.  

New Baby Nursery

I loved this darling little mobile sticker I found; the mobile pieces actually move!  

Linking Up With: Titus 2 Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesdays,

Aquarium Mania

  The boys and I often seem like we're drawn to water.  I love scrapbooking pages about pools, aquariums and even just watching them playing in the water.  For me it's all about the blue and green color schemes for them it's just about the fun.  I often have a huge pile of pictures waiting to be scrapbooked and so I prefer quick and easy designs and layouts.  It's not always easy keeping my ideas fresh and new.  I often scrap the same activity for each of the boys so I'm usually forced to come up with three different pages for each place we visit. We also tend to visit many of the same places over and over again in a year and that makes it even harder.  I find moving the pictures around on the page, switching out embellishments and changing papers often is key for keeping things new.

For this slippery when wet page I used a shaped paper I bought off of Scrapbook.com.  I mounted the paper on some bright orange card stock and used the same orange paper to mount my photos to the bottom of the page.  I then used some bubble stickers and made a small cluster at the boom left hand side of the page & on the right hand side of the page above the picture.  The title is another sticker. I'm all about quick and easy layouts! 

For this aquarium page I mounted the four photos on a block of dark gray paper and mounted it down the middle of some turquoise paper.  the aquarium sign and all the animals were a premade sticker I bought off the internet. 

I actually found this paper in a pack of baby boy paper and thought that if I covered up the words, it would make a great aquarium page.  I carefully cut around the whale's tail and water spout and covered up the words by slipping in a small photo on top of them.  I then mounted the two remaining photos on the white section of the page and used my marker to make small stitch marks around the border.  I finished off the page with a few hand drawn water spouts by the corners of the photo and a quick title made on my Cricut using my Life's A Beach cartridge.  

It was our local aquarium's birthday and the younger two boys and I had a great day exploring the aquarium while eating cake and playing with the beluga whale.  For this page I used two background papers; one that was a blue on blue chevron and another plain blue.  I mounted all photos on white paper and then set them together on the page.  using some left over Sea World rub on's I added the penguin and his droplets of water to the page.  I had the celebrate your day sticker leftover from a birthday sticker pack and both the colors and the sentiment seemed to go nicely.  

Pools, Turtles, and Food

  OK, so day #2 of my new found determination to blog my crafts more often didn't go so well but it wasn't my fault!  I couldn't get pictures to post to my blog and without pictures the blog would be pretty darn boring.  I finally figured how to troubleshoot the problem and thought I'd pick up with some more vacation layouts.

We stayed at the Nick hotel and I took so many pictures by our hotel pool.  There were water slides galore, a slime bucket, and all sorts of fun fountains.  For this layout I decided to focus just on the people in the photos.  When I cropped them all nice and close and mounted them on white card stock the fit beautifully side by side.  I mounted all 6 photos on some dark blue card stock and mounted that on some rainbow printed background paper.  I used the title sticker "at the Pool" and some rafts and balls to embellish the page.  

Staying at the Nick hotel we were able to have dinner with the Ninja turtles! This was a huge highlight for my boys and I ended up with so many photos.  I always find a layout with lots of photos hard to do.  I don't want the page to just be all about the pictures but balancing photos and embellishments isn't always easy.  I happened to have one of the boy's masks in my room with me and it fell over the page; that was all it took!  I mounted all four photos on orange stock and set it off to one side of the page.  Isn't this green paper perfect?  It just happened to be the right shade of green with some orange "stitches" around the edges.  I then flipped my blue paper over and copied the mask; making sure to center the eye parts.  I cut out the mask, lined the eyes with white and used two small circle cutters to cut the black and blue parts of the eyes.  I then journaled around the mask and found the title sticker "cool dude" complete with turtles to finish off my page.  

It's a little odd but my boys loved the Steak and Shake restaurants we found in Florida.  They had such fun and loved the food so much they made us eat there at least three times (and we've sine gone back on every Florida trip!).  I just had to scrapbook it.  With only one photo this page could have been very plain and boring but I had saved their hats (like I save everything when we're on vacation) and after finding this fun black and white retro paper knew that the hat would be perfect for both a title and an embellishment.  I mounted the photo on  a large strip of black and played around with the had until I had an effect I liked.  Sometimes it's those little moments that you want to remember the most.  Three boys snuggling together, wearing hats and enjoying french fries and milk shakes were one of those memories for me.  

Back at It

  I took a pretty long hiatus from crafting and scrapbooking; though looking back on my blog it seems more like I just forgot to take pictures and blog about it.  I'm trying to make more of an effort to blog on this blog every day, but we'll see how long that lasts.  Between homeschooling and keeping up with housework, my homeschool blog, and my boys I'm not sure I have time for ANOTHER blog everyday.  I certainly have enough material though.  I have scrapbooks for all three boys and I tend to scrap everything.  My favorite things to scrap are our family vacations though. Looking back they make me so happy and thankful for all those fun family memories.
   We visited Sea World a few years back and had such a great time.  I bought a few Sea World scrap kits and pieced together other pages using lots of blue, black and greens.  It was fun for me to design these pages since those are my three favorite colors!  I hope you enjoy and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

I cropped and mounted my photos on black stock then placed them around Shamu on some licensed Sea World Parks paper.  The mini words are from a rub- on pack I had lying around my craft room.  It was such a quick and easy Sea World layout.

I had this wonderful black, green and blue printed paper that I just loved.  Most of the colors were also found in the photos and tied them in nicely to one another.  For this page I mounted all three pictures on black card stock and staggered them slightly down the side of the page.  I took a leftover square of black paper and turned it on it's side for a diamond.  Using silver letter/ alphabet stickers I set my title around a sticker of a manta ray.  

My youngest two just HAD to get their faces painted.  It didn't matter that it was scorching hot.  It didn't matter that it was itchy.  They wanted to have their whole face painted and I'm glad we let them.  They came out so beautifully.  For this layout I mounted all the photos on two colors of card stock; one a light blue and the other a pale sea foam green. I decided to add interest to my background by tearing a sheet of white vellum.  I stamped butterflies in white and embossed them on the front.  I then flipped the vellum over and used chalks to color in the butterflies roughly from behind.  I mounted my butterfly printed vellum paper on some white card stock with the embossing side up and set it on the left hand side of the blue paper.  I laid out the pictures and then used some puffy glitter stickers on some sea foam green paper for the title.  I finished off the page with a small strip of blue paper on the bottom explaining our day.   

For this page I used some seashell paper and a blue & tan background paper.  I cut the seashell paper slightly smaller than the blue and tan paper and mounted the seashell paper in the center.  I mounted each photo on some blue paper and staggered them on my page.  I then used the Cricut to cut out the title and staggered that as well.  

You can't go to Sea World and now watch the whale show! It was fantastic.  I used some blue water patterned paper for my background and mounted the photos on two layers of blue card stock. All around the edges of the dark blue card stock I used my marker to make small stitch lines.  I finished off the page with some orca whale stickers, the Shamu's stadium stickers, and a few "splash" stickers I found too. 

The sea lion and otter show was funny and quite comical.  I found this great one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish paper and thought the colors, the fish and the silliness fit right in with the theme of the show.  I mounted my photos on red card stock cut to fit most of the background paper.  I made sure to cut the center ring nice and large so I could then highlight the otter photo by mounting it on blue too.  I embellished the page using some sea lion and otter stickers as well as the title sticker and used a blue strip of card stock across the top to anchor the title and tie in with the blue circle in the center.