Scrapbook. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Of course, working on this cute little scrapbook makes me long for another little one, and no doubt I would have another precious baby boy.  😉  I wanted to share my latest project, a gift for my cousin that is due with her first baby soon.  I love using my Cricut paper cutting machine and this week my sweet husband surprised me by ordering the upgraded and larger version, the Cricut Expression.  I love it and I love my husband for wanting to do those “just because” gifts.  We also got a pretty decent deal on a refurbished one from Cricut.

One of the benefits of living in an apartment is that I have less housework to keep up with and NO yard work! I miss mowing the grass and tending to the flower beds but I am trying to make good use of our relaxed summer schedule and work on some of my other hobbies. I recently set up a small table in the bedroom for my little craft corner. Crafting can get messy and this way my mess is hidden away and I can leave my projects out.

I’m fairly new at scrapbooking and at first I found the small size of this book quite a challenge! I mostly used cuts from the First Few Years  cartridge. This cartridge is cleverly designed with inspirational layouts included. However, these ideas are for a 12 x 12 page! I decided to design two coordinating 6 x 6 pages as “one” layout. The second page in each set is ready for a 4 x 6 photo, and the pages can easily be rotated to accommodate a vertical or horizontal picture.  I’m sure this isn’t the typical way to design a scrapbook, but I think it worked for this “ready to fill” album.  I also attached little tags to each page for journaling. I tend to ruin things with my messy handwriting, so I included a few extra tags for good measure! I had so much fun putting this together and coordinating the baby boy patterned papers with the cut images and at the last moment I decided to add the little pearl accents to each page.

I can’t wait to meet the little one whose face will make this book so much cuter! 🙂

My craft table makes it a little difficult to get into one side of the closet, but that’s okay!

Baby’s initials are on the cover.

This shows the two page layout.