I recently posted the baby album that I made for my friend Ann's daughter, Ella. She is about to turn one so I made a double page LO to add in her album for her birthday party. I used October Afternoon's 'Cakewalk' collection for most of my supplies. I always love scrapping with that line of products. Enjoy!!!
Do you remember when it seemed like all your friends were getting married? Then having babies? Right now I'm in one of those phases. My friends are either having their first or next round of kids and interestingly, they're mostly all girls. Having no daughters of my own, I find a lot of fun in making their albums. My normally masculine colored scrapbook stash is suddenly awakened with pops of pinks, golds, cream and mint! I made an album for my friend Ann's new baby daughter, Ella last fall. Then got extra practice in this spring doing another one for my best friend, Renee's daughter, Amelia. I've had the best time and am a little sad it's time to tuck the super sweet embellishments away - for the time being. I'll post Amelia's album soon but in meantime, here is Ella's:
For Ella's album I chose Crate Paper's collection, Oh Darling. I have a hard time with baby collections. I don't know if I find most of them too cheesy or not suited to my style. This collection was not really for babies but instead for little girls and therefore I was able use a lot of the supplies without an overly baby-ish feel to the layouts. I loved the bolder colors and fun patterns. I chose to stick with the coordinating album and added a chipboard alpha from Hobby Lobby. By painting the letter with pink, acrylic paint and adding Champagne Glimmer Glam by Tattered Angels I was very happy with the personalized result. Now let's dig in!
I really struggled with kicking off this album so I scraplifted from a magazine I'd had in my stash from long ago. It's rare for me to complete layouts in the order they will end up in the completed album. Normally I make myself a "map" [list] of layouts I want to include in the finished album and store them in the album as they are completed. Later, I'll pull the pages out to photograph and reshuffle them in the order I want the information to flow. When I scraplift to create a layout, I only use it as inspiration to get started. Generally I'm looking for either layout, color schemes, and/or techniques. Usually, once I have my paper and have an idea - I'm off! In this case, the inspiration was the lace-trimmed window cut-out. I thought it was the perfect way to open this project. I was very pleased with how it turned out.
For Ann's pregnancy page, I began with a silhouette cutout for inspiration. Sometimes when I am not satisfied, I will keep matting/layering until the creative flow restarts. That is what happened with this page and it ended up being a very fun layout for me.
For the baby shower layout, I decided to match the colors of Ann's shower which were inspired by Ella's nursery. Although the color scheme didn't use the same colors from the rest of the album, I thought it turned out nicely. In the finished album, there is also an 8.5x11 page flap inserted with Ann's guest list, well wishes and gift list. I also added clips and snippets from the games we played as well so it was all together.
The hospital/birth story layout turned out so cute with the dark pink and green. Ann's hospital visitors logged in or had their pictures taken with the baby and were later represented here.
The birth announcement and baby prints layouts are some of my favorites from this album. The birth announcement page happened somewhat accidentally. I saw some trimmings from other pages layered over one another in such a way that it inspired the open squared layerings on the left hand page. It is always so much fun for me when a page pulls together like this. Love it.
Ann had already shared with me that while she wanted to journal the milestones of Ella's life, she wasn't a big writer. A friend had made Ella monthly onesies which Ann took pictures of her wearing so we decided to create monthly update pages with Ella wearing her custom onesies. This would give Ann a place to share milestones, developments, and even some reflection on the time that has passed. I cut picture frames with the Cameo Silhouette along with letters and stamped line items for the journaling. The lined 12x12 paper is from Studio Calico and gave a very natural guideline for when Ann adds in the details later. These pages were a big hit.
Immediately following the monthly pages I made a double layout for Ella turning a year old. This was one of the last layouts I completed.
The 'Sweet Girl' and vellum pocket layouts are actually two single layouts that face one another in the book but are two of my favorites in the album since I love the color balance and felt they did a good job of providing miscellaneous space to put pictures that don't fall into a specific category. Also the vellum pocket allowed Ann to keep cards and keepsakes in one place. Maybe I love the functionality but these two pages bring a smile to my face every time. So much fun - which is the whole point, right?
The closing page came together pretty naturally. I was having a hard time finding enough solid paper pieces to work with and then realized I had a really beautiful cream piece of paper with white bows on it. I though it was so pretty and served as a neutral background for the patterned paper to really show off. Plus using the strips of scraps allowed me to use up some of the leftover trimmings I had remaining. I worried it was too busy but it ended up being one of the family's favorite pages!
Ann needed room in the back of the album for pictures she was unable to include on the layouts without the album feeling cluttered. These pocketed pages from We R Memory Keepers served this purpose perfectly. By creating a legend in the sixth pocket, space is provided to give a little context for the photos.
Thanks for looking! I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I did sharing. I'll be back with pictures of Amelia's album soon!
