How to Make a "Baby's First Year" Scrapbook

Memory books are a great way to create a lasting, unique tribute to your baby's first year. Even if you don't consider yourself to be artistic, it's easy to create something touching and beautiful.

Things You'll Need

• Art Sets
• Acid-free Scrapbooks
• Calligraphy Pens
• Glues
• Scrapbooks
• Scissors
• Acid-free Ink Pens
• Acid-free Papers
• Archival-quality Markers
• Colored Pens
• Cameras
• Film
• Rulers
• Stickers
• Colored pens

Instructions

1. Make sure you have negatives for all the prints you plan to use. This way, you can replace them if necessary.

2. Sort through your prints carefully - choose only the best for your scrapbook, and keep the others in an archival quality photo box for later use.

3. Record major milestones such as first food, first step and when the first tooth made its debut.

4. Arrange your photos in groups according to themes, not just chronologically. You could have a "bath time" layout, a "trips to the zoo" page and so on.

5. Avoid discarding duplicates or very similar pictures - they can often become part of creative layouts.

6. Cut, crop, trim and silhouette your photos. Remember, you have the negatives, so you can always replace a print.

7. Leave some blank space. Rather than placing photos close together and filling up the whole page, leave space for headlines, captions, journal entries, and stickers or drawings.

8. Lay out everything in a number of different configurations before you glue it into place.

9. Be creative and have fun.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider the type of scrapbook you want very carefully - postbound books are great for two-page layouts, and you can add pages to them. Spiral-bound books lie flatter when open and often have prettier covers, but you can't add to them or move the pages around.

• Get a red-eye pen to fix prints taken with a flash. You can find these at most photography and scrapbooking stores and some general-purpose craft stores.

• If a product is labeled "archival quality," this means it's safe to use in your scrapbook.

• Make sure stickers or other tools you use are acid-free and lignin-free - special pH testing pens are available at craft and some photography stores.

• Pens have to be acid-free, too. Special scrapbooking and calligraphy pens in a rainbow of colors are available at most scrapbooking supply stores.

• Scrapbooking can be expensive. Try to keep things simple for your first project, then get into all the supplies and accessories when you're sure this is the hobby for you.