Today is all about getting your children (or other special child in your life) involved in your hobby. I mainly scrapbook my kids, with the occasional page about me or my husband thrown in. But those pages are from my point of view. They’re my opinions, my memories of the event, my choice. I don't often get my children's input or help on the pages I create.
There are plenty of ways you can involve the kids when creating you layouts:
- Let them choose the photos
- Let them take the photos
- Use their artwork on it
- Have them create something just for the page
- Do a Q&A
- Let them tell the story
This layout, originally posted here in September 2009, uses photos my daughter Emma took. It's so neat to see what she sees, what she finds interesting, and what she chooses to photograph. I actually have two more sets of photos I'm planning to do similar pages with.
8.5 x 11| Materials cardstock (unknown) + patterned paper (American Crafts) + flower accent (American Crafts) + letter stickers (American Crafts) + border punch (EK Success) + ribbon (American Crafts)
Kelly went one step further with photos her children took, and let them create an album with them.
We have quite a large collection of photos that they take, either with my cameras or with their own Fisher-Price model (which, by the way, produces vintage-looking photos because the resolution is so low. The photos print really grainy and cool). So I found an old 10x10 album with cardstock pages and gathered up some of my favorites from their collection. Luke (8) is a bit more into adding accents, and Josie (5) likes to write her name next to photos. I've decided that I can help glue photos in or add a few captions, but aside from that, this is their album to do with what they like. I love that we have several photos of the photographer's feet, and none of the photos is centered. I like to see my kids' unique perspective - and giving them their own album grants them ownership over the product.
My girls love their baby brother. I thought it'd be fun to make a Q&A layout with their thoughts and opinions about him. I made sure to write down their answers word for word. I loved hearing their answers, and it’s a point-of-view on their relationship I couldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Lately, my girls have been all about paper dolls that we cut out of construction paper and they decorate. I thought a fun way to embellish this this layout would be to use some of their actual paper dolls.
8.5 x 11| Materials cardstock (Paper Company) + patterned paper (KI Memories, Crate Paper) + letter stickers (Making Memories) + font (Print Clearly)
So next time you’re about to scrapbook a page about your child, get them involved. It’ll be a new perspective for your album and might be your favorite page yet.
