old layouts

REALLY OLD LAYOUTS (1998 - 2007)

I already prepared my pre-made LOs for my daughter's scrapbook months even before she was born in August 1998.  Using only 8 1/2 x 11 copy papers printed with mostly colored clipart images from PrintShop Deluxe.  Even anticipating such events as birthdays, christening, school days, etc.  

Before her brother came in 2001, I already have more than a hundred pages of LOs inserted in clear plastic sheets.  Even then, my layouts have been more of storytelling than what is now practiced in scrapbooking.  The photos are the stars, not the paper they were pasted on, or the embellishments and ephemera added, or even the layout of each page.  I just printed cliparts on each page, found the pix that would go with it, put handwritten journals and the page was made.  

Now, looking back, I still prefer my 200+ clear plastic sheets bound by these giant metal rings than all the other newer scrapbook pages I subsequently made. Here are a few samples from those albums:

Pre-natal ultrasound and even the pregnancy test kit LOL! That's how EXCITED I WAS!  Well, I was married 4 years and I was thinking I might be infertile, so there!

Her hospital tag and info card and the actual page where we listed possible names.  The one we came up with was written on the info card as we still didn't have a name by the time we have to be discharged LOL! True story.  Those are my husband's handwriting on the card :D

Congratulations card and a very heartwarming note from my favorite (almost like my own kids) nieces and nephew.  It translates to "Mammee Ces, When are you arriving with the baby?"

It may be unsanitary to look at but I just have to put them on something for posterity LMAO!  Sorry if you found them repulsive.  That sheet is sealed in case you're wondering. LOL!

Like all mothers, I find it sweet when the husband do the usual baby chores.  He was really hands on and knows about childcare as much as I did LOL! One of the dialog balloons translates to: "Enough dad, my dead skin cells and grime are all gone!"

I actually planned to make palm & foot prints every year but I can't find the succeeding years' prints LOL!

 

Some of the gift tags from her 1st birthday

I put her first cut hair tied with a ribbon on a magazine cut out.  Luckily, I was able to find the actual words "First Haircut", too! :D

The green giant is from a Brussels sprout ad I found in a magazine, I layered this old postcards I found in my stack of memorabilia and cut a silhouette of my daughter and put it on the postcard so she looks like a giant, too.  I was lucky again that there's a child pointing up towards her on the postcard.  His brother tore her picture but she glued it back and added her own journal which translates to: "Y tore my picture!"

Another magazine cut-out, I  keep forgetting to add more pic on the 2 babies! :P

These are the feathers of her first pet bird named "Babon" (bird in Filipino is "ibon" but she says babon instead).  I had it already planned in my head that if the bird dies, I would really preserve her feathers and put it on the album). I didn't color the clipart so the feathers would stand out.

And Babit her first pet rabbit came next.  I cut some of its fur to be put on this page.  I just put them inside the sheet randomly LOL! 

This is a photo of my late father and my daughter on the beach, I found this shell-shaped lavatory in one of the  Toilet & Bath brochures of my husband's and cut the silhoutte to fit the basin. 

This one is an old Cannes postcard, I cut their silhouette to make it look like they're sitting by the pier.

Her earliest face doodles

These are the hospital tag and info card of my son in 2001

Less than 2 days after I gave birth to him, we have to rush him to the hospital for a sever umbilical cord infection.  He was also jaundiced and that's when we found out that my husband and I fell under the A-B-O Incompatibility making my son very susceptible to infections.  This whole page is a chronicle of his hospital ordeal and my personal thoughts.  I sterilized the actual drip used on him and put it as border.

Just like his sister's, I put his first cut hair on a magazine cut out.  He loves the alien LOL!

"NEWER OLD" LAYOUTS (2008 - 2010)


It took me a decade of scrapbooking the old-fashioned way before I found out through the internet that there's a lot more going on in the scrapbooking world!  Hundreds of sites, hundreds of specialized merchandise and an entirely different way of scrapbooking.  It took my breath away.  At one time, I felt embarrassed at the so-old-school way I was scrapping our photos! But still, it was my creation and they were done with only my ideas guiding me and I was proud of it.  Even when I was into this modern scrapping thing, I didn't touch my old pages.  It was part of our history and I even love the creases on the pages and the worn-out look of the album.
 
These are mostly 8 1/2 x 11 LOs I've made from 2009 when I started keeping up (or attempting to keep up) with the latest scrapbooking trend.  I had no hi-tech gadgets or tools aside from the quintessential scissors and craft knife.  

All my alphas and most of my embellishments are cut by hand from templates I've made myself.  LOs are really, really simple.  To further save money, I made collages out of the loads of photos before having them printed. 

It took me a long while to finally try and do a 12 x 12!  Though I bought scrapbook papers and cardstocks (very, very gradually!), I was loathe to use them, I find them so pretty (and expensive!) to cover them with photos & embellishments! 

So most of my backgrounds are just painted with cheap kids' watercolors, most of my papers are just gift wrapping papers or specialty papers made for gift wrapping & not scrapbooking, really cheap but the designs are just as nice as patterned papers.

The first (and the only other) LO I've made with myself as subject.  The handcut title is from an old MAD magazine gag line I've read from way, way back which was so hilarious I remembered it! LOL!

Photo collage of family vacation on a very simple LO

Scrap-lifted LO from a Creating Keepsakes back issue.  Buttons are just regular buttons painted with nail polish!

I cut the circles on an old gift wrapping paper & inserted those small pix.  Title is a pun take on the phrase "bits & pieces"

Family is mad about LOTR & everything Tolkien & Middle Earth so I made this page as a homage. I wrote our names in Elvish, put the actual ring token from our LOTR boardgame, and wrote the title as a pun take again on Gollum's signature line, "my precious" :D  Done on tracing paper layered with a full movie tie-in book page of Sauron's ring & Middle Earth map .

I got this frame from an old book of angel crafts, hand cut the alpha for the title.

Really goofing off pix at the beach.  All letters are cut by hands.

Another photo collage on a simple layout.  Swirls are handcut.  Geez, I haven't put on a title until now :)

Simple LO for my daughter.  One of the earliest I did.  Not entirely happy with it actually.

Photo collage of my son on the beach.  He loves the water so much, hence the title.

This is a tribute of sorts for the late Crocodile Hunter Stever Irwin.  My family loved his shows dearly that we were really saddened when he died as if we knew him personally.  I love the cereal snakies -- they're from a Kellog's magazine ad!

Photo collage of my daughter.  Put on a lot of charms so I just titled it "Charmed"

My kids goofing off.  Hideous fabric flowers! LMAO! I think I replaced them with something more pleasant :)

The background is a book page from a children's book I bought from Booksale precisely because of its colorful pages!  I positioned the photos on the part where it has texts & printed my personal advices for my kids.

This is a page from a quilting magazine I also bought from Booksale.  I cut the squares from the frame & inserted the photos & title.  There's an actual pic on the bottom part where the heart frame was so I covered it with foam stars. :D

Another untitled LO.  I buy bare eyelets from the bookstore then just paint them with nail polish! The flowers are from another gift wrapping paper!

Another photo collage of my son.  He's diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay & ADHD and we tend to make a joke about it, hence, the title & subtitle.  I made the flourish myself with glue and glitter and sticker sheet!

This is actually a full-page advertisement in a Creating Keepsakes magazine back-issue I bought from Booksale.  I cut the center part and made the whole page like a frame.  I have since taken out that hideous orange flower and replaced it with a pretty embellishment LOL!

Hand-painted cardstock.  The pretty flowers are from a CK mag page!

One of the first journal elements I made.  My special needs son's first special ed school day!

My mounts are just images cut out from magazines.  Paper is another specialty gift wrapping paper, quite fabricky & transparent & hard to adhere on paper!

Page from a crafting magazine from Booksale. 

One of my first attempts with glitter and glue before I used double-sided adhesives for a more uniform surface finish LOL!

With this page, I drew the wave on the sticker sheet first, cut it and dipped on the glitter.  The effect was a flatter but more uniform surface.

Another book page with a built-in title! LOL!  I since removed those foam flowers and replaced with fabric ones.

Simple layout with my kids.  I love the googly eyes LOL!

Father & son page.  That white flower & flower spray is long gone and replaced with another one.

Double-pager of my daughters various pix.  I cut the butterfly images from a glittery gift wrapping paper and just put the shaped pix in the center.

I printed our names using a script-y font on a tracing paper, just cut a rectagle on a gift wrapping paper voila!

The swirls are cut-outs from a mulberry paper.  I experimented with colored sand and glitter and the effect is not that great LOL!

My kids & their cousins in one of our family trips.  I just cut papers to imitate hills & put twines and random eyelets.  The palm tree, grass & cloud are DIY while the sun is punch out.

My sisters-in-law with my son.  I used two of the fabric-y paper & used jewelry wire for the title.  Felt border embellishment from All About Scrapbooking.

RAYUMA is Filipino for ARTHRITIS!  I just can't bring myself to make serious titles, though this started out as something cheesy (from the song) popularized again by one of our favorite British actors, Bill Nighy in the British christmas film, Love, Actually! I thought of putting "GOUT?" but the vernacular just brings the joke more to the point in my opinion.

Another hand-painted page.  The tree is an actual leaf piece from our family trip, painted with metallic nail polish!

The title is how my son used to say "big boy".  One of my first handwritten journalling attempts.

I buy those really really cheap jewelries just so I could use them on LOs like this! Title is again, handcut :)

I like the title and the photos of this page but I find it so bare.  I still haven't gotten around to altering it though.  Title is from those cheap stickers worth Php10! 

Kids gathering pinecones in Camp John Hay in Bagio.  The leaves and flowers on the tree are plastic charms.

My son and my favorite nephew whom I've baby-sat since he was 2!  This is one of their first homecoming since they lived in Canada 10 years ago.  I used real colored bamboo strips for that square thingy.

Printed title on a computer sheet, handpainted background and bamboo strips for the fence.

Double-pager.  It actually has a preceding page with almost the same LO but the title says, "Welcome to our jackass garden!"!  distorted images from youcam.

One of my favorite pages though the alpha cut-outs are quite hard to make.  The embossed images are handmade using my husband's architectural templates!

The title is self-explanatory I hope.  Pix of my son in his tongue-outing poses.

I saw this LO from a CK magazine and fell in love with the tree so I tried to make one myself.  Not as full as the original (it used tissue paper) since I used paper twine I just uncurled but I love just the same.

Another LO copied from CK mag.  Vines and title are handcut.  I made the beads flourish.  Unlike Peanuts' Linus my kids don't have security blankets, they have security pillows (yes, they still have them until NOW! LOL! Seriously.)

Well, the title says it all -- my son literally hanging from the boxing bag they use for taekwondo practice.  He just loved it, he'd rather hang from it than kick or punch it LOL!

Sorry for the censorious image, but this is really how we goof around.  The title is virtually our family motto.  If LIFE is familiar, it's because I cut it from a Life magazine :)

A pun on "photogenic" --  the pix are actually those disaster shots that would never see the light of day normally, but hey, scrapbookers take on anything, don't they?  Journal translates:  "blurgenic adj. beautiful and handsome if the photos are blurred!" LMAO!

One of my first 12x12 LO.  This is where I originally used "slipping through my fingers" as title.  I printed the entire song on a parchment paper, layered on a sheet of mulberry paper.  Butterfly and flourish are DIY glitter-on-sticker-sheets.

My double-pager dedicated to my late father.  The subtitles translates to "father", "older brother", "uncle", "grandfather."

I made this before my late younger sister (& only sibling) two years before she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.

In 2007 until 2008, I got hooked on Yahoo!Answers under the Books & Literature Section.  I amassed a number of cyber-friends, fellow Harry Potter fanatics.  I made a double-pager to remember those fun times, printed their Y!A avatars & put my descriptions of each of them & tied it under each photo so it's a hidden pull-up of sorts.  That is me on the top corner -- bellapuff (I always answer in-character as Bellatrix Lestrange LOL!)

I didn't make "pull-outs" here but I attached the photos with eyelets loosely so they'd turn & journalled the descriptions under each photo.  I printed a troll clip art to make that no-troll-allowed element!  
I really did an extra mile on making these pages because it's one of the most memorable times in my adult life.  I get to be friends with people with the same interests and similar personalities and 90% of them are kids half my age!  I seem to be the only one with 2 kids! LMAO!  I miss those times specially these people. :(

First 2 pages of my son's 12x12 album which I made myself copying the commercial one I bought. 

I lost the actual doodle but was I glad I took this photo of it.  Hand cut titles.  Astig roughly translates to "cool" if you want to be wholesome about it, but it translates more to something like "kick-ass!" LOL!

Double-pager for my son in various poses and characters over the years.  Print-out titles and subs.

and like most of my pages, there's bound to be a punchline!

The handcut title is how my then 6y/o son sings "who let the dogs out!". He can copy the tune but not the words LOL!  He's playing with our Belgian Mallinois Arthur (but because he had speech difficulty, he calls it R2), giving him water from the hose nozzle which R2 really loves.  I traced the dogs image from the Stampin' Up catalog I bought from Booksale!

I had to make a page where I chronicle one of my son's GDD (Global Developmental Delay) morbidity. We couldn't wean him out of the feeding bottle until he's already 6 and going to special ed school.  This is one of his last "feedings" before he totally came off it!

I've already finished the page when I realized I cut web the wrong way round LMAO! It looked like a steering wheel instead! Darn!

I even had to make a page where he cut his foot while in the pool.  Even had to put in the gross blood drops.

This may not be PC or acceptable to most Western parenting styles but we view toys as toys and so we let our kids play with them; we seldom have problems with kids who play with toy guns (or playing computer games like GTA or Counterstrike which my son does) ending up violent like in the developed countries.  My son, even with his GDD, can distinguish toys from real guns (which we have) and would not touch the latter.  Filipino kids generally don't have psychological hang-ups over these things.

Background is a gift wrapping paper.  Handcut titles and photo collage of my kids on their bikes.

Untitled LO of a photo collage.  Background is a page book from an art mag. I just punched holes for the ribbon.

Titled "Time" (I used a chipboard tag) and put puffy number stickers of my son and I through the years.  I journalled where the photo was taken.  Background paper is just gift wrapping paper.

I seldom make layouts now as I'm more inclined to do 3D projects and mixed media art.  But from time to time I love looking back at my old layouts and remember not just the events and memories but the fun time I had while making them.