Scrapbooking is a fun way of keeping memories alive and recording the events throughout one’s pregnancy. It’s a sort of diary, but with more pictures and heavily accessorized with quotes, comments, sketches, magazine cutouts, ribbons, dried flowers, and other interesting mementos. Some mommies like to create their scrapbooks by hand with a blank album while other more tech-savvy moms like to publish their digital scrapbooks online where family and friends from faraway places can see and comment on what’s been posted recently. Whatever medium is chosen, the following tips should help mummies create a week by week pregnancy scrapbook.
Choose an overall color scheme for your layout or album design. Your scrapbook will be made of various objects that look different from each other. The one thing that binds them together will be the scrapbook’s themed layout, such as a sepia-toned background with handwritten script for descriptions of images and comments on the border. Don’t choose a gender-specific theme unless you’re sure of your baby’s sex. Also, print out your album’s layout if you want a specific design for your background. These suggestions apply to both an actual album and a digital one.
Use a Lomo camera or Instagram to create interesting images. These days an ordinary digital camera seems boring without the additional filters or effects that Lomography or Instagram can provide. Lomography is a popular amateur form of photography that uses low-quality cameras from Holga, Diana or the Austrian Lomo. This sub-cultural genre of photography has been described as spontaneous and candid. Because of the camera’s poorly built structure, the photos often come out with slight exposures, faded colors, and blurry images that altogether create a surreal work of art. In comparison, Instagram allows the same spontaneity and artistic freedom as Lomography, but with a more technical bent using smartphones instead of analog cameras.
Scrapbooking materials come in many forms. You don’t have to buy ribbons, laces, stencil paper, or Japanese paper to make your album beautiful. Accessories with what you’ve got on your work table, in your drawers, and in old boxes behind your closet. Your sewing kit or your art deco kit also serves as inspiration for designing your scrapbook. Search for old magazines and cut out images or letters to better express what you feel or think during each week that your pregnancy progresses.
Request copies of your ultrasound images and colorize them to create a montage of your baby’s growth. Add photocopies of medical documents from your visits to the doctor. That your baby is healthy and seems to be growing normally inside your tummy is both a source of joy and trepidation as you get nearer to the final week. When you look back at those days when you were barely showing, you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come to bring another human being into this world and experience the happiness of going through the journey of motherhood once again or for the first time.
