9 Ideas for Scrapbooking Baby Photos

How many photos did you take when your baby, your grandbaby, your nephew or niece or good friend’s child was born? We’re betting lots and lots. We’ve got several ideas for getting those baby photos onto the scrapbook page.

1. Embellish with baby’s  monogram

This is a photo of Tara McKernin‘s son at two months old, propped on pillows with his blanket on top. Tara says, “I just love this photo, and it required center stage.” To make sure this photo got all the attention is deserved, she used a simple page accent and favourite E.B. White quote. A pennant and a letter tile with her son’s initial as embellishing proves that less is more and ensures the photo is the focus.

2. Scrapbook your vintage baby photos

Sue Althouse says, “I dug deep into the archives to find baby pictures of my husband. Older photos like these can be a challenge. The colors may be faded and the subject is often very small. Memories are nearly impossible to recall, so, by necessity, the journaling is short and of a more general nature.”

3. Use muted pastels to scrapbook a portrait of mom and baby

This page will be the first in Marie-Pierre Capistran‘s daughter’s baby album. She kept it simple with pastels and basic name and birthdate information. Three low-contrast embellishment clusters create a visual triangle that doesn’t detract from this wonderful photo of mom and baby.

Marie says, “Making this page was about having fun. I played with washi tape, ribbons, my silhouette cutter, sewing,  stamps and ink; with punches, nice papers and vellums. I left open space below the photo to let it ‘breathe.'”

4. Span the page with your newborn portrait

Amy Kingsford‘s goal with “Just Right” was to make a soft and simple page to showcase a portrait of her son at one day old.  A black-and-white photo with a bit of soft patterned paper spans the width of the page.

Amy says, “I chose a muted color palette and delicate embellishments–my favorite of which is the tulle ruffle that I’ve used to ground my over-sized border.  I added  pops of dark blue for both contrast and context. The title came about because my little guy weighed only 5 lbs when he was born and everyone kept telling me how small he was, but I didn’t want to hear that my son was any less than perfect and I always he insisted that he was just right!”

5. Add a border of nursery-themed animals

Brenda Becknell added cute zoo animals you might see in a nursery decor along the bottom of “Sweet Little One,” and then echoed the colors and patterns in a banner at the top right corner of the page.

Brenda says, “I broke out of my ‘norm’ for this page and used themed paper with a border at the bottom.  To give the animals a little more dimension, I used colored pencil and gamsol to add a bit of shading and highlighting.  I trimmed the patterned paper about 1/8″ all the way around; not enough to destroy the symmetry of the border but enough so the brown backing paper could show.  The banner was cut from another patterned paper, and I stitched bakers’ twine along the top of the flag.”

6. Quilt a background with tone-on-tone patterns

Katie Scott used a square punch to make a quilt-patterned background out of tone-on-tone yellow patterned papers.

Katie collaged several photos of her daughter on white cardstock and placed that on top of the yellow quilting. Red chipboard alphas and embellishments make a high-contrast visual triangle around the photo grouping. Katie says, “Since one of the photos included rubber ducks, I added duck embellishments.”

7. Scrapbook a sleeping baby with nighttime colors and embellishments

Barb Brookbank scrapbooked a photo of her grandson sleeping with a dark nighttime blue, a sliver of the moon, an owl and “dream” word art.

Barb says, “I layered strips of papers behind the photo, added shadows for dimension and then clustered elements very close and overlapping the papers.
The journaling on the page reflects the photo in which my little grandson looked like he was thinking so hard!”

8. Pair your baby photo with a meaningful quote

Amy Kingsford wanted to capture the power of the phrase, “All because two people fell in love” on this page an accomplished that by paired it with a photo of her newborn.

To put the focus on the message while still showcasing this adorable yet tiny photo of my youngest son at one day old, Amy says, “I bracketed the photo with my over-sized title. This way neither the message nor the photo gets lost on the page.”

9. Scrapbook a baby boy with soft and grungy materials

Jennifer Matott scrapbooked her son Christopher at 6 weeks old on “New.” Jennifer says, “He fell asleep wrapped in a blanket and looked so sweet!  I wanted to use masculine papers but with some soft and pretty touches like the flowers.  I like the contrast of the soft and grungy against each other.  He is one of my best creations yet!”

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