One of the reasons I took a break of a month from my blog was that I was trying very hard to finish a baby book for my little sister's new baby. She had the baby (a girl) on August 17th (I think, I can't remember the exact date, oops!), when her official due date was September 11th. I was frantic trying to get it done, since I thought I had almost another month to work on it. The other reason was that we started our homeschool again. It's taken me a few weeks to get used to the schedule again. Hopefully now that I'm more used to it, I'll be able to juggle everything a little better. We'll see!
I used a basic formula on all of the pages. I alternated purple and pink for the background pages. I put the embellishments on tags that were the opposite color of the background paper. I also added eyelets and fibers to the tags. There was a border somewhere on the page, usually made with pink or purple ribbon, but sometimes made with patterned paper. I added photo mats to the pages so she'd know where to put the pictures. She loved it when I gave it to her. I used an 8 x 8 album from a Creating Keepsakes album kit I bought at Joanne's a while ago.
This is the title page. It has a place for a 5x7 photo so she can put the hospital photo here. Along the side it says "It's a girl!" and has a place to put the name, date and time born, weight and length. Sorry about the pictures being in the page protector, I just didn't want to chance messing things up by taking it out.
This is the first page of the "At the hospital" spread. I used The Angel Company "Baby things" stamp set on the tags and then colored them with colored pencils.
This is the second page of the "At the hospital" spread.
This is the outside page of the "My family" spread. There are two pages on the outside and I used panoramic page protectors, so they open up to another 4 page spread that has a page for each family member with the baby. I think it worked out well. The stamps are from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets.
The other outside page of the "My family" spread.
The first page of the inside family spread. Since it's a four page spread, I tried to make them flow as much as possible. These inside pages use layered Prima flowers for embellishments on the tags.
The second page of the inside family spread. This one only has the ribbon on top and bottom to make it flow with the next page instead of separating itself into a separate page, which I felt putting the ribbon down the sides would do.
The third page of the inside family spread. This one only has the ribbon on top and bottom to make it flow with the next page instead of separating itself into a separate page, which I felt putting the ribbon down the sides would do.
The final page of the inside family spread. The ribbon on the far side helps to end the spread.
This is the first page of a spread about food. I thought the baby face was cute for it. The stamp is from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets.
Second page of the "Yummy" spread.
Close up of the "Yummy" from the food page. I used my craft robo to cut out the titles so that they could all be from the same font.
Cute little feet page. I just love pictures of baby's feet. I bought this stamp a long time ago at Walmart. I think it's by stampcraft.
Cute little feet page. I just love pictures of baby's feet. I bought this stamp a long time ago at Walmart. I think it's by stampcraft. She can put a foot print on these pages if she wants.
Cute little hands page. I just love pictures of baby's hands. I bought this stamp a long time ago at Walmart. I think it's by stampcraft. She can put hand prints on these pages if she wants to.
Cute little hands page. I just love pictures of baby's hands. I bought this stamp a long time ago at Walmart. I think it's by stampcraft.
A two page spread about baths. One of the stamps is from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamps, the other from The Angel Company "Baby things" set. I colored them with my prismacolor pencils, making highlights using a darker color in some areas. I used wave letter stickers I had to give it the feel of water.
A two page spread about baths. One of the stamps is from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamps, the other from The Angel Company "Baby things" set. I colored them with my prismacolor pencils, making highlights using a darker color in some areas.
"Sweet Dreams" spread. I always loved to take pictures of my boys when they are asleep, so I decided to include this in the baby book. The border patterned paper has stars on it. The stamps are $1 Micheal's acrylic ones.
The second page of the "Sweet Dreams" spread.
A first haircut spread. I included a clear memoribilia pocket so they could save a piece of her hair. I only had patterned scissors stickers from scrapbook supply stickers, so I cut the patterned part off so I could use them as regular scissors on this spread. I thought the baby face from the $1 Micheal's stamp set worked perfectly for this theme.
Page 2 of the "First Haircut" page.
A first Halloween spread. The title came from the clipart images that Creating Keepsakes used to include in their magazines for people to copy and use. The stamps are a Pooh Bear, Piglet and Tigger set I got a long time ago. They are dressed up in costumes and are "trick or treating". My boys think it's funny that Pooh's costume is a Tigger costume.
Page 2 of the Halloween spread. The mats are candy corn paper that I bought in probably 1999 or 2000 for my boys' 8 1/2 x 11 scrapbooks that I hadn't used yet.
A first Thanksgiving spread. The title is made with some dot alphabet stamps I got from Walmart. The images are from the "fall sketches" set from The Angel Company.
Page 2 of the first Thanksgiving spread. I love this ribbon. It is organza ribbon that goes from a light orange to a dark orange horizontally on the ribbon. The bottom is lighter than the top.
A baby's first Christmas spread. One of the ribbons says "Merry Christmas" so I let that be the title. The stamps are from The Angel Company "Winter Sketches" set.
Page 2 of the first Christmas spread.
A first Easter spread. I didn't have any Easter stamps or stickers that I liked, so I cut these jelly beans from a piece of patterned paper that I've had a long time. The dot alphabet stamp set from Walmart was used again. I saw this ribbon in the $1 ribbon bin at Micheal's one day while I was working on this album and just new it'd be perfect for the First Easter spread I was planning on doing.
Page 2 of the first Easter spread.
First birthday spread. I used The Angel Company "birthday sketches" stamp set for the images. I love these 2 step stamping sets from this company. You stamp the part that is solid and then there is a seperate stamp that contains the lines that you stamp next. It allows you to get a detailed stamp without hand coloring the stamp with markers.
Page 2 of the first birthday spread. The "it's your day" stamp is from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets.
I included calendar pages so my sister could keep track of the important developments in her daughter's life. This is the August 2008 spread. One page had a 7 x 7 inch calendar and the facing page has a photo mat. There is a place to write her height and weight. I used the dot alphabet from Walmart for the words "height" and "weight".
Page 2 of the August 2007 spread. I used The Angel Company "Baby things" stamp set on these tags.
September 2007 spread. I alternated putting the calendar on the left page when the background was pink and on the right page when the background was purple, just to give it a little variety. I used $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets for this spread.
Page 2 of the September 2007 spread.
October 2007 spread. I used The Angel Company "Trick or Treat" set for the images on this page. I colored them with colored pencils.
Page 2 of the October 2007 spread.
November 2007 2 page spread. I used The Angel Company "Fall sketches" stamp set for this page.
Page 2 of the November 2007 spread.
December 2007 spread. I used the Stampin' Up Christmas minis stamp set I have for the images on this page.
January 2008 double page spread. I used a called "let it snow" from the Simply Chic stamp line by Provo Craft for the images on this spread.
Page 2 of the January 2008 spread.
February 2008 spread. I used images from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets.
Page 2 of February 2008 spread.
March 2008 2 page spread. I used stamps from the "Baby Things" set by The Angel Company for this spread.
March 2008 spread page 2.
April 2008 spread. I used the duck from The Angel Company's "baby things" set and a duck from one of the Micheal's $1 acrylic stamp sets for this spread.
Page 2 of April 2008 spread.
May 2008 2 page spread. I used layered Prima flowers for this spread since Mother's Day is in May and all moms love flowers : ).
June 2008 2 page spread. I used a stamp from the $1 Micheal's acrylic stamp sets for this spread.
Page 2 of June 2008 spread.
July 2008 2 page spread. These images are also from a Micheal's $1 acrylic stamp set.
Page 2 of July 2008 spread.
August 2008 2 page spread. I used stamps from The Angel Company's "baby things" set for this spread also.
Page 2 of August 2008 spread. This is the last calendar spread. The calendar covers 13 months, from the month she was born (August 2007) to the month of her first birthday (August 2008).
This page is a pocket made from some baby patterned 8 1/2 x 11 paper I've had for several years. I included it so my sister would have a place to store all the cards they get for the baby.
I hope you enjoyed looking at this baby book I made. I know this post is kind of long, so thanks for being patient with me.
