Scraps Of Mind

Scrapbook Cards for Special Occasions

A few years ago, when my sister turned 50, I was inspired to make a special mini book for her.

Each page was a snapshot of a decade of her life. It was a hybrid album, with some pages having ‘real life’ embellishments added, some being wholly digitally scrapbooked and some being miniature traditional scrapbooked pages.

She was rapt with it, and quite frankly I was pretty proud of it too.

I had never done anything like that before and I was very happy at how my first project of this nature had turned out. Especially as I had made the actual album myself too. Unfortunately I didn’t think to photograph it so I only have some of the digital components to show you.

My nephew Chris was also very taken with it and said he’d like something similar for his 18th which was coming up a couple of months later.

So fired with my success I made a mini book for him out of old CDs.

Once again this was a hybrid scrapbooking project and I traced his life in photos on each mini circular scrapbook layout.

He loved it.

And I discovered that I had started a tradition.

So as each of my niece’s big occasions — 18th, 21st birthdays, engagement – came along I made them a ‘life story’ type mini album as a card.

You can see the purse album, I made for one of my niece’s here.

But now my nephew is turning 21.

Arrghh!!!

I’ve already done a ‘life story’ album for his 18th birthday. He doesn’t really have an album’s worth of life photographed over the last 3 years for me to make a sequel.

What to do?

Well I knew I’d have to make an scrapbook album style card for his 21st. I had a reputation to uphold, after all.

So I checked through the photos that my sister provided me with (fortunately there were a goodly few to choose from) and I decided that I’d theme the album around his head. And the different looks that it has had over the years. That way, although I was still documenting his life, it wasn’t in a chronological order, like his previous album. It’s a more themed look.

And this time it’s all digitally scrapbooked. The only hybrid part is that I made each page in the silhouette of the head shot on the front and cut them out to stick on a black concertina album in the same shape. I used paper from Thao Cosgrove’s Art Journal Kit, which is one of my all time favorite kits.

Because there is more chance that Chris will walk naked down main street than that he will read this blog, I feel pretty safe in sharing his card with you. I know he’ll never see it here so it will still be a surprise when I give it to him in a couple of weeks.

So how about you?

Do you use your scrapbooking skills to make special cards and albums to commemorate the big events in your family and friends’ lives?

They don’t always have to be a chronological life story style. Taking a theme such as the different ‘head looks’ of my nephew can open up a lot of scope for you.

And that’s certainly a relief for me because I’ve got Bec’s 21st coming up next year and I’ll have to come up with something to top the one I did for her 18th.