Tips |
PICK A THEME
I have a barnful of half-finished projects--baby journals that trail off before the baby can roll over, a half-done photo album, its last entry a picture of my husband, James, long-haired, on a motorcycle he sold in 1987. The point is, undertake a scrapbook you can, and will, finish. Choosing a theme, as loose as Our Summer or as particular as Our Week in Maine, gives your project a shape, encourages your creativity and gives you a deadline. If your kids are older than mine, canvass them for ideas: Little League 1999, My First Year of Kindergarten or Our Baking Scrapbook. Remember, too, that within your theme, pages needn't be chronological, a decision that can save you much organizational stress. Little League 1999, for example, could feature pages entitled "The Team," "An Interview with Coach," "Opening Day" and "Learning Left Field."
BECOME A COLLECTOR
One of the liberating things about scrapbooks, at least the informal kind we made, is that literally anything goes. Cards, newspaper clippings, seed packets, to-do lists, leaves, cartoons and any other physical artifacts of your life are all fodder. Something as mundane as a grocery list can have nostalgic resonance in years to come. So much macaroni and cheese! To make it easy to collect and sort through, I kept a big basket, nicely portable, on my desk and tossed in all our memorabilia.
DON'T FORGET EVERYDAY SHOTS
Creating our scrapbook made me rethink our picture-taking routines. Although we were in the habit of photographing big events, such as birthdays, we had few pictures that captured our day-to-day lives--no picture of the boys' beloved baby-sitter, Chris, or our typical evening routines. To make it easy, I invested in a new idiot-proof automatic camera, stocked up on film, and enlisted the help of James, our house photographer. Soon, taking a picture or two every day became instinctive. Now, when I flip through our scrapbook, it's these everyday shots, such as Jack with his pals at day care that stand out. To me, they capture what our summer was really like, the details that are most precious, yet easiest to forget.
DESIGN EACH PAGE AS A WHOLE
Scrapbook pages look best and are easiest to read when conceived as a whole. For each page or pair of facing pages, pick a simple color scheme, create an overall title (as I did with "Nicky's Favorite Things") and try laying everything out before gluing it down. That way, you can find the best balance of images and think through where you want captions. Although matting against a patterned background is popular these days, when I tried it, I thought it looked too busy and detracted from our photos. Kids--and I--need to be reminded that the point is not to cover every inch of the page. A little white space can really allow your elements to shine.
SHOW OFF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
Pictures are the heart of most scrapbooks, and Jack and I had fun experimenting with methods of showcasing ours. Old-fashioned photo corners, I found, made our pictures look neat and formal. Matting shots against colorful paper as I did with our pet page set the images off nicely from the white paper, almost like miniature frames. Silhouetting photos (cutting them out of their backgrounds) gave a playful look. This worked best, I discovered, with full-bodied images--that is, when the whole subject was in the photo. I silhouetted some shots of our dogs, and they now look like two-legged dogs (an effect Jack nonetheless thought was fun). Silhouetted photos also can be mounted on colorful paper--or you can draw a simple marker border around them. Lastly, you can photocopy favorite shots and let your kids color them in.
SHAKE THINGS UP
My favorite page in our whole scrapbook records a tub-time conversation I had with Jack about his hero Buzz, from TOY STORY. When we did our scrapbooking a little later, I cut out a coloring book picture Jack had done of Buzz and wrote down the dialogue verbatim. (Mama: Where does Buzz live? Jack: In a house full of water. Mama: What does Buzz eat? Jack: Macaroni and cheese.) Such offbeat pages, I found, helped make our scrapbook feel fresh and kept my kids engaged. Here are some other simple ways to capture some of what's unique about your family:
I have a barnful of half-finished projects--baby journals that trail off before the baby can roll over, a half-done photo album, its last entry a picture of my husband, James, long-haired, on a motorcycle he sold in 1987. The point is, undertake a scrapbook you can, and will, finish. Choosing a theme, as loose as Our Summer or as particular as Our Week in Maine, gives your project a shape, encourages your creativity and gives you a deadline. If your kids are older than mine, canvass them for ideas: Little League 1999, My First Year of Kindergarten or Our Baking Scrapbook. Remember, too, that within your theme, pages needn't be chronological, a decision that can save you much organizational stress. Little League 1999, for example, could feature pages entitled "The Team," "An Interview with Coach," "Opening Day" and "Learning Left Field."BECOME A COLLECTOR
One of the liberating things about scrapbooks, at least the informal kind we made, is that literally anything goes. Cards, newspaper clippings, seed packets, to-do lists, leaves, cartoons and any other physical artifacts of your life are all fodder. Something as mundane as a grocery list can have nostalgic resonance in years to come. So much macaroni and cheese! To make it easy to collect and sort through, I kept a big basket, nicely portable, on my desk and tossed in all our memorabilia.
DON'T FORGET EVERYDAY SHOTS
Creating our scrapbook made me rethink our picture-taking routines. Although we were in the habit of photographing big events, such as birthdays, we had few pictures that captured our day-to-day lives--no picture of the boys' beloved baby-sitter, Chris, or our typical evening routines. To make it easy, I invested in a new idiot-proof automatic camera, stocked up on film, and enlisted the help of James, our house photographer. Soon, taking a picture or two every day became instinctive. Now, when I flip through our scrapbook, it's these everyday shots, such as Jack with his pals at day care that stand out. To me, they capture what our summer was really like, the details that are most precious, yet easiest to forget.
DESIGN EACH PAGE AS A WHOLE
Scrapbook pages look best and are easiest to read when conceived as a whole. For each page or pair of facing pages, pick a simple color scheme, create an overall title (as I did with "Nicky's Favorite Things") and try laying everything out before gluing it down. That way, you can find the best balance of images and think through where you want captions. Although matting against a patterned background is popular these days, when I tried it, I thought it looked too busy and detracted from our photos. Kids--and I--need to be reminded that the point is not to cover every inch of the page. A little white space can really allow your elements to shine.
SHOW OFF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
Pictures are the heart of most scrapbooks, and Jack and I had fun experimenting with methods of showcasing ours. Old-fashioned photo corners, I found, made our pictures look neat and formal. Matting shots against colorful paper as I did with our pet page set the images off nicely from the white paper, almost like miniature frames. Silhouetting photos (cutting them out of their backgrounds) gave a playful look. This worked best, I discovered, with full-bodied images--that is, when the whole subject was in the photo. I silhouetted some shots of our dogs, and they now look like two-legged dogs (an effect Jack nonetheless thought was fun). Silhouetted photos also can be mounted on colorful paper--or you can draw a simple marker border around them. Lastly, you can photocopy favorite shots and let your kids color them in.SHAKE THINGS UP
My favorite page in our whole scrapbook records a tub-time conversation I had with Jack about his hero Buzz, from TOY STORY. When we did our scrapbooking a little later, I cut out a coloring book picture Jack had done of Buzz and wrote down the dialogue verbatim. (Mama: Where does Buzz live? Jack: In a house full of water. Mama: What does Buzz eat? Jack: Macaroni and cheese.) Such offbeat pages, I found, helped make our scrapbook feel fresh and kept my kids engaged. Here are some other simple ways to capture some of what's unique about your family:
•Transcribe funny family quotations, stories and jokes.
• With markers, draw cartoons, family portraits and doodles.
• Create decorative borders with fingerprints and handprints.
• Let your child dictate the photo captions to you.
BE AN IMPERFECTIONIST
Sharing creative control with a three-year-old wasn't always easy. And I confess, I never finished a scrapbook page without wishing I could go back and do it again, better. I also quickly discovered a little about hypocrisy in myself. In one breath, I would tell Jack that I loved the green he chose for his drawing, "Rhinoceros Beetle Walking in Circles," and in the next I would show him my drawing of Nicky's raccoon puppet and say, "Sorry, Jack. Mom can't draw worth beans." But if I had made each page a masterpiece, I never would have finished. And finishing, in the daily marathon that is life with two small kids, was half the triumph.
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