It’s my first scrapbooking project (if you don’t count the ones from high school, assembled on shoe boxes, with magazine clippings, such as "his small size doesn’t excite her.") As you click through the images, you’ll notice navy blue cards sticking out the tops of some of the pages; that’s the hidden journaling (which is next on my to-do list). Those pages will have small ribbons attached, from which to pull.

I tried to bind the pages using thin ribbons, and it worked fine, but I think the rings are sturdier. I’ll attach some red, white, and blue ribbons to the rings (once I get larger rings). I compiled the book of their first year chronologically, using holidays and some milestones (first solids) as dividers. As for the title cards, I designed the shapes in photoshop, then did a print and cut with my personal die cutting machine, so the labels are actually raised with a bit of pop-up adhesive. The book is 6 x 6, and ideally, I’d make a few more of them. One for each child, one for us, one for each set of grandparents (three in total), but it’s never going to happen. Unless, of course, I miraculously have free time. If I could do it over again, I’d have it all bound at kinkos or office max or some such place.

The details of how it was done: Using 12 x 12 paper (and a printer wide enough to accommodate it), I created a 12 x 12 document in photoshop (use any design program) and arranged 4 photos within it. I then printed the sheet of 4 blocks of 6×6, and sliced them  with a cutter. Next, I used adhesive to glue the pages back to back (these will be the pages). Next, I figured out what I wanted to say on the transparencies and printed the words onto normal letter-sized transparencies. Alternatively, one could use vellum, or could stamp in lieu of printing. The last step was the hole-punching (again, if I could do it over, I’d have kinkos do this as well). Hope this helps. Now all that’s left to do is journal, which I can do as the beans entertain each other by passing blocks and sucking on them. Good times.