Summer Scrapbook Pages

Here are a few more scrap booking hints from my latest layouts...

Black & white photos are great for adding a twist to the look of your scrapbook layouts.  Sometimes I scrap just one black & white for a sentimental effect.  But to spice things up a bit, I like to play with black & white a little.  In the layout, Blue Eyes, I made the photo black white and then recolored our eyes blue to really make them pop.  The layout is about Emerson's eyes looking a lot like mine.

Another b&w trick is to have several pictures in a layout in color and one standout photo in b&w or have all the pictures b&w and one stand out picture in color.  In Brayden's zoo layout, I wanted to show off the great shot I got of cute Bailey, the baby elephant.

A great photo trick I learned many years ago for taking pictures of people in front of big things like buildings is to have the people stand way in front of the building and only a few feet away from the camera.  That way the people are normal size in the photo, rather than teeny-tiny, and you still get your other subject in.  In Brayden's water park layout, he was on the other side of the park from the slides when I took the picture.  I got a good shot of Brayden and the twisty slides in the background give the photo a real water park theme.

In Emerson's water park layout I wanted to show the motion of her going down the slide.  I took shot after shot of her going down the slide and then lined the shots up across the layout to show motion.









Now for journaling... when I get with other moms to scrapbook they frequently debate handwritten journaling vs. typing.  I say use both.  When I want to tell a long story or give a detailed explanation for a layout, I will print it off my computer and adhere it to my layout.  However, I think even if a mom has what she considers messy handwriting, she should include some handwriting for her children's layouts.  My mother wrote me a letter when I was about 12 I keep in my journal that I cherish.  Not just for the words in the letter, but because I feel close to my mom just looking at it.  It has her perfect teacher cursive and a pretty flower on the stationary.  It is comforting just to look at my mom's writing.  My mom also has told me that my handwriting is similar to my grandma's.  I didn't know my grandma well before she passed, but it makes me happy to think I have something in common with her.  Years from now, when our kids are looking through their childhood scrapbooks with their own children, one of the things they will love best is their mother's writing.  It makes the book personal and homey.  Our children won't care that the writing is a little crooked or a random word is misspelled or that we have chicken scratch, but they will love that we preserved a little of our love for them in a book that can last forever.