Baby Scrapbook {The Scrap Shoppe}

My friends, you are in for a treat!!  I saved the best for last :) Our final guest author of Baby Week is one of my bestest blogging buddies, Michele from The Scrap Shoppe.  She has some fun baby ideas to share.Take it away, Michele!!**********************************Hello everyone! I'm Michele from The Scrap Shoppe.I use my blog to to share craft projects that catch my eye, interesting craft techniques, show off my scrapbook-themed t-shirts (T-Shirt Tuesday! You can read more about my t-shirt biz here), and give you some fun freebies that you can download and use in your own crafting. And I also share a creation of my own each weekend.

Here are a handful of the projects you can find at The Scrap Shoppe:

You can see my interests vary greatly from paint, recycled items, mini albums, scrapbook layouts, fabric flowers, canvas, to home decor!

I have an Etsy store where I sell my graphic designs as digital downloads, as well as fabric flowers, and other scrapbook embellishments. I have plans to open an Etsy jewelry store in the future.

I also spend a lot of my creative energies making things for this little guy.Cute, huh? This is my son Gavin, and he is 21 months old and a ton of fun. This photo is from Mother's Day at a strawberry festival. Since scrapbooking is one of my favorite hobbies, a lot of the decorations in Gavin's bedroom are made by paper crafting. It was one of the more inexpensive ways I could think of to deck his walls. 

Scrapbook paper covered wood letters. I painted the sides by sponging on blue paint. The animals were pre-painted and purchased from Hobby Lobby for ~$.50 each. They are hanging from the letters with thin satin ribbon. This project hangs over Gavin's crib.

Chipboard license plate frames covered with cardstock. I used a Cricut machine to cut the letters. I have a super cute animal stamp set I used to make the animals.

This ABC's banner is a more recent project that I made for a new play corner in my son's room. I'm a big believer in visualization so I figure the more he sees the ABC's, the faster he will learn them! You can see more photos of this project on my blog.

Keeping It Simple!

Also as a scrapbooker and mom to a toddler, I know it is so easy to get overwhelmed with all those photos of baby. The first thing you need to do is go ahead and admit to yourself you will not be able to scrapbook every single photo of your child that you take. Pick out the ones you deem most special and put the rest in a regular photo album. Trust me, it will save your sanity!
While I do have a 12x12 album devoted to layouts of my son, I know it will take forever for me to fill it up. Not only that, but I scrapbook photos as the mood strikes me. That means it may not be in chronological order. That can make waiting for a complete album to show off a long time coming. My solution? Mini albums! Mini albums can be made quite quickly, especially as you can often time find kits to make them which lessens the amount of time you spend searching for matching embellishments. Mini albums are also good for the psyche because they only involve a handful of photos with a specific theme which makes the task seem to go faster.
Here, I've made a mini album devoted to the first year of my son's life. Each page shows a picture that I feel represents that month. I used the Little Yellow Bicycle Baby Safari collection. What is great about this collection is that a part of it is month by month journaling cards. Talk about making my job easy!
I've chosen the cover and a few of my favorite pages to showcase.





I love that this allows me to see how my little guy has grown in one small album. The idea of throwing together a mini album or only scrapbooking a few choice photos not only goes for baby photos, but those hundreds of photos you took while on vacation, photos of your pets, special occasions, etc.
Remember, keep it simple, don't try to scrapbook everything, and don't get overwhelmed! Thank you, Alison, for letting me share!
She is the cherry on top!!!  Thanks Michele!  I love your ideas!