Surprising Birthday LO Ideas

From the LM Archives

Surprising Birthday Layout Ideas By: Cecilie Malling, Design Team Member
Birthdays are good for you.  Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. ~Larry Lorenzoni Every day we each get a little older and maybe even a little wiser and once a year we celebrate the day we were put into this world. Since birthdays are recurrent events and every one in the family has one (at least) once a year we all end up with a large amount of birthday pictures we’d like to keep in our albums. And don’t forget while documenting the family of kids’ and loved ones to also document your own birthday celebrations. At birthdays there are often a lot of activities on and even more clutter around which makes it a difficult to get calm pictures but don’t let that keep you from scrapping the birthday pictures. You need to focus on the memories you are preserving and in years to come it will be fun for you and the kids to return back to the pictures and remember the busy feel of the birthdays even if the pictures aren’t the best in the world. Moreover it might be a good idea to only scrap the very best of the pictures and keep the rest in a separate album or you could do a layout with a hidden part or a pocket to make room for more pictures. It might seem an overwhelming task to tackle all the pictures from birthdays and Melissa advises that you use for instance Becky Higgins’ sketches as a starting point for your multiple photo layouts. That way you can either use the sketch with 4x6 photos or use the sketch as a guideline for resizing of the pictures. These two sketches are based on layouts by Susan and me, and I hope they may inspire your next birthday layouts: When you have chosen the best pictures from the latest family birthday you still need ways to calm down the busy pictures and give your layout a focus. This might be done in these ways: - mat the photos on cardstock to frame them against one another - you might opt to use less patterned paper, monochromatic patterned paper or just a few colors to calm the entire layout down - really bring attention to one strong picture by having it enlarged on page one of a double-page, framing it differently than the other pictures or having embellishments point towards this photo: One of the staples of a birthday is the cake with candles and the pictures of the kids’ blowing out the candles might have colors that are muted because the photos were taken in the dark and without flash. Madeline’s tip is that these pictures even with their imperfections make for great pages and that you might bring out the best of muted pictures by using bright or deep colors instead of light or pastel colors: Since birthdays are so happy, fun and bright in themselves adding a bit of shine to your layouts would be just right. In the latest releases a lot of the items have been glittery and these are really fun products that add shimmer to your layouts. If you want your title to glitter the 3 inches highScrapworks Shimmer Alphas have a great glossy glittery effect and there size make them perfect for larger titles. The Melissa Frances Pop-out Glitter Alphas are smaller and have a matte effect but I really like how the glitter stays on the letters and doesn’t rub of on the rest of the page elements. For smaller titles or subtitles the new MM shimmer stickers have a fun variety of fonts and sizes. Not only your titles and texts can be glittered up since there are also a lot of new glittery embellishments available. The new Making Memories Shimmer brads come in various color combinations and they have a pretty matte shine. You can even get a glittering skull to use on a funky boy birthday page or sparkling rub ons might add the right amount of glitter to your layout. If you want to add a little glimmer to elements of your page that doesn’t shimmer on their own you might want to try using either one of the many colors of Stickles or try the Melissa Frances’ glittersthat can be used with glue to embellish or even write text directly on your layouts. What ever you chose do remember to have fun at the birthday and at the later creation of the birthday layouts. Happy Birthday ;o)
Design Team Examples To view all layout ideas and products used, please be sure to visit the Design Team Gallery: Surprising Birthday Layout Ideas Or Click each image below to see a larger view! Cecilie Madeline Franny Nancy Miranda Melissa Wendy