My first scrapbook reveal

So here is the first peek into my scrapbooks prior to Project Life; this particular one being Pete’s second year scrapbook.

Even though I’m planning to write a number of posts about my ‘framework’ for scrapbooking, I still want to give you a bit of context for this scrapbook. Basically, my approach for Angus, Pete and James has been to do:

a) a baby book (you know, the ones that record all the birth weight details, etc.)
b) a special first year scrapbook that records their entire first year
c) ongoing scrapbooks that records their subsequent years.

And so this scrapbook fits into the third category…

For the notebook, I chose a visual diary by Kikki-K because I liked the style and the paper quality/thickness was very decent. More importantly, the spiral was big enough to accommodate lots of photos being stuck inside the notebook, and the thick elastic meant the scrapbook would be held together really nicely. I had bought a set of three from the previous collection for Angus’ scrapbooks and so I purchased three of this one for Pete.

For the title page here, I simply used some letter stamps (also from Kikki-K) to spell out Peter’s name, doing my best to centre it on the page.

You’ll probably hear me saying this quite often: my approach to memory keeping is always to keep the aesthetic and content as simple as possible.

As you can see here, I’ve used no embellishments, a black felt tip pen for journalling and a simple thin, white border for the photos.

Each time I updated this scrapbook, this would be my process:

• Using Aperture (the program I use to organise and manage all my photos), I select the photos I want to include in the scrapbook. I don’t really care whether or not the photos are great quality ones in terms of sharpness, colour or composition. (I save those for photo books, which I’ll talk about in future posts.) Instead, the photos I choose are simply ones that captured a moment I want to record for the future Pete.
• I print the photos as contact sheets through the Aperture print functionality so that I can get miniature-sized photos. By using smaller photos, it means I can include more photos.
• Before picking up my scissors, I number the photos chronologically on the back of the photo paper in case I (or some other little person) accidentally knock them out of order.
• After the cutting up was done (probably my least favourite part of the entire process), I stick them down chronologically into the notebook. I fit about eight to a page, and usually adapt a ‘grid approach’ to the layout (as shown in the second of the two photos above). My primary concern is to leave enough space for writing dates, captions and journalling afterwards.
• I always leave the left hand side pages empty and save them for showcasing the photos I want to highlight. If I really like a photo, I print it in a larger size and stick that in (see the first of the two photos above).
• After sticking in all the photos, I go back and do all the captioning/journalling based on the photos that I have chosen. I include the date of the photo based on the photo’s metadata in Aperture. I am always happy to keep the text to a minimum, and to let the photos do the talking.
• For all my captioning and journalling, I write in the first person, addressing the future Pete directly.

So there you have it! Angus’ 2nd year and 3 year scrapbooks have also been done this way, and I’ll be sharing them here over the coming weeks as well.

I’m so glad to be back from my bloggy break, and I look forward to catching up on all your blog posts. The time out was fantastic, as it allowed me to finish the magazine job (super yay) and also to work out the next step for my blog. I’m seriously excited and can’t wait to reveal more in the next month.

(Linking up with Jess for IBOT.)

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Tagged as: memory keeping, Pete, scrapbooking