Birthday Albums

Thanks to Pinterest, I've developed my Inner Crafty (as well as the overwhelming urge to make my own crayons, turn barn equipment into furniture, and live on quinoa, but that's another story).

My latest project was a pair of "birthday albums" for the kids.  The idea is that you ask them the same questions every year from their 3rd birthday to their 18th birthday to see how their answers change over the course of their childhood.  Place a photo from that birthday next to the question sheet and voila.  The beauty is that although you put a lot of work into it upfront, after the album is assembled you just have to write their answers in every year.

Here is Zoey's album:  

(The lighting in the first picture is a bit bright, the actual pink is more like the 2nd picture)

Most of her answers are right on, but some are more interesting than others.  Her response of "ice cream" for her favorite snack is funny because she never gets ice cream as a snack.  I think she ate it twice in the past year.  But hey, it can still be her favorite. 

The fact that on multiple occasions she never had an answer to "what makes you sad" actually makes me feel really good in a weird kind of way.  I know she gets sad, but perhaps she's so young and innocent that maybe the concept of sadness doesn't immediately elicit a response from her.  I'm glad that she doesn't have immediate associations with sadness.  I'm glad she doesn't have true cause to BE sad right now.  It makes me impulsively want to nurture everything that is good and light and happy in her.  I love that when I asked "what makes you happy", her face lit up into a smile and she gave answers right away.

And my favorite answer?  "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  A flower.  Absolutely perfect.

There were a couple of people interested in how I made these albums, so here are the technical details:

I used the SEI 8x8 Preservation Series Albums (plus 7 extra page inserts per album), which I got on Amazon:

Initially I planned to use 20 questions, but they didn't all fit nicely onto an 8x8 page with the font and spacing that I wanted, so I trimmed it down to only 15 questions.  I chose the 8x8 album because I like the overall look and I also specifically like the look and printing-convenience of 8x8 photos.  I got the professional-quality photo print from Persnickety Prints for just 99 cents.

For the question sheets, I created the document and set the print parameters to 8x8.  I used standard white 8.5 x 11 cardstock and used our paper cutter to cut it down to size.   After all the question sheets were printed, I tackled the number circles in the corners.

I bought scrapbooking paper and a scalloped circle die punch from AC Moore:

Once I had all the circles punched out, I glued them to the pages.  I actually used Fabric Glue because it's what I had laying around.  It was either that or a sad dried up glue stick, but this worked surprisingly well.  The container has a nice tip that allowed me to easily control how much glue I put on, plus the texture of the glue is really thin and smooth so there were no lumps under the circles.  Amazingly I only managed to glue one circle to myself.

For the numbers, initially I was planning to use stickers.  However, that ended up being a problem.  I wasn't thrilled with the variety in the stores, either the size was too big or too small, the font was goofy, the color was weird, or the texture/thickness was wrong.  I wanted to see/feel them in person so I didn't trust ordering them online.  Then even for the ones I found that weren't too bad, it was difficult to find letter/number packets that had multiples of each number in the pack (specifically the number "1" which I needed 8 of per album).  So I decided to just use stencils instead.  

I think a sticker would have been nicer if I had found the perfect size and color.  I had to be very careful with the stenciling and ended up throwing a lot of pages away because of smudges.  I can tell they don't look quite as uniform as a sticker, but I still think they turned out nice.

Oh, for the intro page I just used a piece of pretty scrapbook paper for the background and glued a square of cardstock to it that I wrote on.  At first I planned to print my note to the kids in a pretty font, but it felt too impersonal.  So instead I wrote it by hand.  It's messier and uneven, but it's me and it felt right.

With the pages completed, I tackled the cover.  I bought thin wooden letters at the craft store and painted the edges.

Then I used Mod Podge to glue a piece of scrapbook paper to the top of the letter.  Once it dried (completely) we used an exacto knife to cut the extra paper away from the letter.  And by "we" I mean Marty.  Even having a broken splinted right middle finger, an exacto knife is still safer in his hands than mine:

Then we glued the letter to another square of scrapbook paper using Mod Podge, let it dry, and glued the whole thing to the cover.

It took a few days to complete both albums, I spent a couple hours each night after the kids went to bed.  But I'm really happy with how they turned out!  I think this will be a really fun thing to do on their birthdays and I can tell we'll look forward to filling this in every year.

Here is Finn's completed album, which we'll tuck away until he turns 3: