Arts and craft activity for kids: scrapbooking with your child

Scrapbooking seems to be all the rage in the crafters circles lately. It’s fun, relaxing, and you can garner a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that your photos are artfully and safely arranged with written memories included. But did you know it doesn’t have to be an adults-only activity? If your kids are like mine, they love looking at pictures of themselves and other people they love. With a little time and care, you can help your child to create their very own photo scrapbook – just like Mommy!

Step 1: You’ll need to acquire photos, of course. If your child is old enough to handle taking pictures themselves, you may want to invest in an inexpensive 35 mm or 110 camera that is their very own. You can usually get them at department stores such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears for $10, and that often includes a set of batteries and one or two rolls of film. If you allow your child to have their own camera, allow them to take their own pictures, within reason, of course. Otherwise, sit down and go through your own pictures and let them help you pull out which ones they want to use.

Step 3: Decide on some basic arrangements of the photos. If your child has just chosen a variety of photos that aren’t necessarily tied together, try to manipulate the arrangement so that you can get the most balanced composition across the pages. Don’t try to crowd too many on to one page, but try not to leave big gaping holes of empty space, either. (Unless you know that they will want to write a lot on the page.) (You will be trimming the photos, so take that into account when you’re trying to figure the spacing). After the final arrangement is agreed upon, stack them up neatly and proceed to step 4.

Step 4: You will need to rid the photos of unnecessary surroundings. For instance, if the picture is really of Grandma in the recliner, you don’t need a picture that is mostly of the living room. A photo trimmer is the easiest way to get the job done neatly and quickly. I prefer the type that has a raised handle that you bring up and down to “chop” off the edges. If your child is old enough, they can do this step with supervision. If they’re not old enough to handle the trimmer on their own, they can still assist.

Step 5: If your child wants to be more decorative with their photos, they can trim the edges or corners. For a smooth, rounded finish to the photos (such as with professional photos) you can use a tool known as a corner rounder, which merely snips off a small rounded portion. These are usually very hard to handle, so you will either preform this step with the assistance of your child. If they desire fancy edges or corners, there are many corner cutters and scissors on the market that make decorative edges such as scallops and jagged edges.

Step 6: Now, you will need to apply your adhesive of choice. If you want to preserve these photos, make sure you are using a photo-safe adhesive, never white glue or scotch tape. (White glue tends to warp photos, anyway.) For a simple album like this, I prefer using the small “photo splits,” which are little double-sided adhesive stickers with a covering paper on one side; you can apply one sticky side to your photo first, and the covering paper will protect the other side of the sticker until you are ready to adhere it in your album.

Step 8: This step is optional. If your child would like to put decorative papers on the page, cut them out now and choose their placement. For my son’s album, we simply chose Creative Memories pre-cut paper triangles and put two on each page, in opposite corners. Place your adhesive on these papers and go ahead and put them on your album pages.

Step 8: Lay your photos out on the pages as you determined previously, one or two pages at a time. When you’re sure that your child likes the arrangement, you can both begin putting them in place, carefully.

Step 9: Now it’s time to “journal”! Journalling is just writing down the information about the people and places in the pictures, plus any memories that you want to record. If your child is old enough to write have them preform this step. If they’re not old enough to write, let them dictate to you what they want to say about each picture, even if it seems to make little or no sense to you. If they like, and there is room, you might want to let them draw on the pages, too. Remember, this is their project, not yours! Years from now, you can enjoy and laugh at the things that your youngster had to say.

Step 10: Decorating is fun! I don’t know of many children that don’t love stickers, so this is usually the favorite part. Pull out all the stickers that you would deem appropriate for their pages, and allow them to choose what they want for each page. Then let them at the pages, stickering to their heart’s content, as least as much as you can! While it’s generally not recommended to place stickers directly on the photos, let them put them anywhere else on the page that they want.

Step 11: Covering your pages is optional. If this is an album that you want to keep, go ahead and invest in protective page coverings to keep smudgy fingerprints and cookie crumbs off the album pages.

This is a wonderful, easy parent/child project that should have you smiling and laughing the whole time. Memories are precious, and what could be better than making new memories while you’re preserving some old ones?