How to scrapbook your baby’s first year

With the digital world taking over every aspect of our lives, hardly anyone ever prints pictures of themselves or their family anymore. Pictures are all stored on Facebook or other online apps, and instead of collecting dust, they’re now collecting likes on social media.

But nothing beats taking a trip down memory lane while holding a hardcopy photo album filled with your family’s most treasured memories.

Scrapbooking is a unique way to capture all your child’s important pictures in one place. The regular adhesive albums are so yesterday and dare we say far too boring.

Scrapbooking is particularly great for moms who want to have a hardcopy album of their child’s first year of life to store away in a memory box. It allows you to be creative with layouts, colours, textures and designs. Scrapbooking is the Rolls-Royce of memory books.

Here’s a look at how you can use scrapbooking to capture your child’s first year.

What you will need:

• Scrapbook
• Baby pictures
• Embellishments, arts and craft supplies

Choosing pictures

Before you start making your scrapbook look pretty with your craft supplies, pick out all the pictures you want to use. Lay the pictures out in chronological order so that it tells the story of how your child’s life began. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Picture of mom and dad
2. A picture of a positive pregnancy test (if you have one)
3. Your pregnancy photos
4. Ultrasound pictures
5. Photos from the delivery room/hospital
6. A picture of your baby in his/her first outfit when leaving the hospital
7. Milestone pictures
8. Special occasion pictures like Christmas, Mother’s Day and their first birthday

Get creative

Once you are done laying out your pictures it is time to get creative. Professional scrapbookers consider design principles like the alignment of pictures, colour co-ordination and whether images from the same shoot/time are being repeated too often. Some scrapbooks even come with layout suggestions. But you don’t need to be that fancy. Use your craft supplies to add some glitter to a page or stickers that emphasize things your child loves. If you are creatively challenged, consider investing in a ScanNcut Machine. You can scan a design you like onto the machine, which will then perfectly cut it out for you so that you can stick in your scrapbook.

You can also add keepsakes like a lock of your baby’s hair or a foot or handprint taken when they were born. Including a family tree is also a great idea.

Also read: Sewing hacks that will make your life a breeze