Please help me get ideas for a baby book About This Page:

[kmurburg]

OK ladies, I need advice and ideas.
A friend from work was just made a first time Grandma and I would like to give her a special little "brag" book so that all of us at work can keep updated on her wee one.
I bought a book at Wal-Mart that is tag shaped and has about 20 pages. I asked my friend to bring me a few pictures of the newborn so that I could make her something - I would also like to do a 12 x 12 page and frame it for her son and his wife. So I figured the book will mostly be empty except for embellishments and some pre-matted pages for her to fill in as she gets them. I was thinking I would like to do up some pages for "firsts" - like first smile, first visitors, first cereal, etc. Does anyone have any other firsts or another direction that I could go? The book pages are plain white so I bought some pastel chalks and I'm going to try to shade the outer edges to enhance them. I would also like to do some of the ribbons like
Nala uses. So Nala, if you are reading, can you please give me some hints for these like what you use and how you attach etc. Sorry this is so long! I'm excited to start working on this and really need some help from all you experts out there! TIA!

[Nala]

Oh, how fun! And there are so many cute things out there for little girls.

Ahhh, ribbon, where do I start? Just thinking about ribbon makes me smile. (man, I got it bad for ribbon ) I think my favorite way to attach ribbon is with plain staples. If the ribbon is wide enough, one staple will hold it. They even make them in different colors (Making Memories I think) so if you don't like silver, there are other options. Another way to attach them is with a brad. And if you have a sewing machine handy, I suppose you could sew them on to the paper (but I have never tried that. Hmmmm....) Another way to attach them is to string them through a hole that is punched, like on a tag.

I buy ribbon at all of the local craft stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael's, as well as my local scrapbook stores. Jo Anne's has a great selection too (I try to avoid Jo Anne's at all cost as it end up costing me way too much).

I am working on a baby book for Grumpy's grand niece and I have thought about doing some "First" on pages. I think the one thing you need to find out is if the new parents are camera happy or not. If they are the type to only take a picture here and there, a lot of firsts may not be captured. If you want the book to be able to cover a year or so of firsts you could include first steps, first words, and first time crawling. You could even do the last page for first birthday if you wanted to take it out that far.

You may also want to think about (if you haven't already) getting all the birth information such as day, time, weight and lenght and doing one of the first pages with that information. Do you have a scanner or know someone who does? If so, a copy of the baby's foot print would make a great embellishment on a page.

OK, time for me to stop! Man, get me talking about ribbon and I turn into a rambling fool!

Let me know if you have any more questions about ribbon and I will try and help. If I think of any more ideas for your tag book, I will post them in yet another long, drawn out post.

[kmurburg]

Thanks Nala! That will help me a lot! So for the ribbons you just pick a variety of different types and mix and match to see what looks good? I love the idea of the footprint for a page! I can't wait to do this since I have never done any baby things and you're right all the little girl things are soooo cute!

[Nala]

Yes, I mix and match. If I am doing a layout in a specific color, I try to keep that color common in my ribbon, but find ribbons in different patterns that have the common color. I also have found a few netural patterns I use with almost any color and they work well and tend to break up a single color scheme. There are several types of black and white plaid (or black and tan) I use often, an off white with black dots and a black and white stripe (all of which I used on my Grumpy tattoo layout if you want a picture to see what I am talking about) that I have found will go with almost anything. Brown is another good netural to use and it looks really pretty with pale pink.

Another note about attaching ribbon is that the staples or brads will show on the back of your page. (if you punch through the actual tag page) You will need to cover the back page with card stock or patterened paper to hide the staples or the brad prongs.

[Shell_of_the_South]

My cousin made a very cute baby page. It was titled Baby Parts or something like that. She took close up pictures of a hand, foot, ear, etc. You could do a page with "Baby Feet", "Baby Hands", etc. and then they could take the picture and insert it.