Creating a Life Book: Page 1, Alex's birth
A
few days ago, I told you I was
ready to get started on my daughter Alex's adoption life book. I also told you that I'd let you know
how I progressed. Well, I have good news and bad news:The good news is: I've done page 1.
The bad news is: it doesn't look anything like all those amazing samples you see on scrapbooking websites.
Figuring out what the subject of page one was going to be was actually much harder than I thought. After much hemming and hawing, in the end, I let my archives of photographs decide: since I had a scanned copy of Alex's ultrasound, a tasteful (read: "non-gory") picture of my husband Marcus cutting the umbilical cord, and a photo of Alex about 2 minutes old, I thought I would let those three photographs tell the story of her birth. I also found an old blog entry from my personal site that I felt captured my feelings around that time, so I handwrote portions of it on index cards, and included them on the page as well.
Then, of course, I'd spent so much money on that ridiculous "scrapbook jewelry," I felt compelled to sprinkle bits of it here and there.
So, the picture above is the finished product. It's hardly of professional quality, but I guess it's made by my hands and it's from the heart, so I suppose, in the end, that's all that matters. Also, as I looked through photographs and pulled the page together, I realized how very lucky we were to have these images -- many other adoptive families don't have pictures of their child's first breath, or Daddy cutting the cord. Now, two years after the fact, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that Alex's birthmother was so generous in sharing her birth experience.
I've already decided that page two will show the first 24 hours of Alex's life (and oh, how many photos I have to choose from!), and page three will describe placement day, when Alex came home to us about 48 hours after her birth. More as these develop.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sadaf Trimarchi 1-28-2006 @ 10:29AM
I think it looks lovely. And take it from me (total scrapbook nerd) you deserve credit for getting the project started! That's always the hardest part. Keep things simple. Those fancy layouts you see in the magazines look great for a lot of other reasons besides the design. Too many doo-dads on the page are distracting. The journaling is nice, you'll appreciate it even more later.
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Heidi Evans 1-28-2006 @ 10:43AM
It IS beautiful, and I know these things- I have a degree in Fine Art and Aesthetic Pickiness;) It's a great project- what a tresure for the munchkin.
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Erin 1-28-2006 @ 12:49PM
you page is great. Remember those fancy pages are done by people who are usually paid to do those pages and/or have been doing them for A LONG time. Many scrappers will tell you of their "bad" first pages -- where we've over-used things like those oh-so great (at the time) fancy scissors, or stickers or whatever. You can't second-guess your work... the critical things to have to scrapbook (IMO) are a paper trimmer, corner rounder and some pens for lots of journaling. The rest of the stuff is just extras... they are great but not necessary. Having the memories recorded is key. Enjoy and have fun doing your pages. GOOD LUCK
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Gawdessness 1-28-2006 @ 1:04PM
Simply put - it is beautiful.
Breathtakingly so.
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sarah gilbert 1-28-2006 @ 11:57PM
I think it's lovely too :) were I a scrapbooking site, I'd be proud to display your design alongside those "professional" scrapbookers. (and, if you want to know my REAL opinion, it's way better than anything on creative memories :)
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eden 1-29-2006 @ 8:11PM
I love it too. I love the uniqueness of it, the content, layout and composition. Hard to believe it's a fledgling attempt ;) Is there a bigger version so we could see the details?
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alison 3-07-2006 @ 3:04PM
Karen it is awesome, congratulations on getting it started. I found your blog because well I have not started Sarah's lifebook. I am gathering the items LOL !!
Our daughter is from China I love this site http://projectlifebook.com/ and the scapandtell site.
Alison in Canada
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