Scrapbooking Baby's First Years

Ideas for Creating a Scrapbook for Baby's First Years

For many people the birth of their first child is also the birth of their lives as scrapbookers. The desire to record every momentous occasion and movement is as natural as taking care of your soon-to-be "paparizzi-fied" little one.

Creating a scrapbook of your beautiful new baby can be as easy as taking photographs and organizing them into a simple photo album.

For others desirous of introducing colored papers, stickers, embellishments, and other popular scrapbooking elements, there are endless ways to enhance your child's every captured movement with the thematic scrapbook stylings of the day.

When it comes to babies, a popular and timeless theme for beginner and advanced scrapbookers alike is to create a scrapbook consisting of your child's milestones, also known as baby 'firsts.'

This kind of scrapbook includes notable event's like baby's birth, first teeth, first bath, etc. Baby firsts can include anything, but here is a short list of mainstays in any baby scrapbook:

- Baby's birth
- First feeding
- Being weighed at the hospital
- Baby's first bath
- Baby being introduced to siblings
- Meeting grandparents, aunts, uncles
- First car seat ride
- First time in a stroller
- First time eating solid food
- First time using a straw
- Holding head up
- Crawling
- Sitting up
- First time "cruising" - using furniture to walk
- First steps
- First teeth
- First hair-cut
- First holidays - Halloween, Christmas, Chanukah
- Baby's first birthday

This is an important time for any family and photographs only tell part of the story.

Consider enhancing your baby scrapbook with short journal entries, captions, and details of the day - who came to visit, what siblings might have said, what you were feeling, etc.

Even the simplest of scrapbooks will benefit from handwritten or typed notes that mark the event.

To add even more interest to your baby's firsts include mementos in your scrapbook such as a swatch of clothing, a hospital bracelet, a lock of baby's hair, or a birth announcement.

You can easily incorporate them into a colorful scrapbook page with a pocket envelope. These can be purchased or created by hand with paper that matches the page's theme.

And for those inclined to prepare a simple photo album, a plain envelope can be used to hold the cherished item.

Also, another popular way to enhance your scrapbook is to add stickers that match in style, color, and theme to the rest of the page and event. These range from simple one color stickers to multi-dimensional stickers of many colors. Stickers can be found in any craft store.

Lastly, if you're challenged to create a baby scrapbook for the first time, consider a pre-designed scrapbook that comes with embellishments. Many varieties have surfaced in recent years and you can find them for just about any theme.

You can also mimic a scrapbook page already created by someone else using your own supplies. Examples of page layouts can be found in scrapbook sketchbooks, online layout galleries, and most of the popular scrapbook magazines available at newsstands.

Creating a baby scrapbook is easy if you follow the inspiration of your child's momentous journey in the photographs you have captured.

Be free, experiment with various styles and layouts, and before you know it, you'll be moving on to graduation scrapbooks!

~Jenny Day has been scrapbooking for 10 years and recently turned her obsession into a profession. A busy mother of three she knows how to make scrapbooking easy and fun. Get Free Scrapbook Digital Scrapbooking Kits by visiting Scrapwow.com