today! Yippee!
So this Friday’s giveaway is two copies of Simple Scrapbooks latest and greatest special issue called scrapbook play. (And since this week is all about kids, “play” seemed like a fitting theme.) So two lucky blog commenters will win one copy of scrapbook play. Sound fun? Great…here’s how to play along.
Post an idea (or two or three) to help me come up with a plan for a scrapbook project for Kailea’s Brownie Troop. We want each girl to make a scrapbook this year, and I’ve volunteered to coordinate this project. (Which is just so fun, don’t you think?) But here’s the catch. We won’t have a ton of time on an ongoing basis for the girls to work on their scrapbooks. Each meeting is just an hour long…and it’s not going to be all about scrapbooking. So I need some really simple ideas…that will allow the girls to record their year in Brownie’s and introduce them to this fantastic thing called scrapbooking without spending an inordinate amount of time to do it. I have some ideas…but I just know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all of you will have even better ideas that I haven’t thought of. Oh, and we’d also like to keep it economical…so economical ideas are good, too.
I’ll keep the comments section open for the next 48 hours…which puts us at 5:00 PM Central on Sunday. I’ll turn off the comments at that time and draw two winners from anyone who has commented before the 48 hour deadline. (Drawing will be held Sunday evening or Monday morning.) Good luck and thanks for helping me with this kids’ scrapbooking project. So fun…I just can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Oh…and for your reading pleasure, here’s an article on back-to-school scrapbooking written by Connie Myers (who writes for craftrends magazine.) Connie interviewed me for the article last summer (after my friend Janine referred Connie to me) and then come to find out Connie was at Memory Trends so we got to meet in person. Just another one of those small world coincidences. Isn’t it? Anyway…be sure to check out Connie’s article for some great ideas on scrapbooking for kids.
A favorite way to record events for me and for my two boys is through an art journal. We write in our journals, draw, paint, add stickers, movie ticket stubs, a leaf picked up while hiking. My boys love their journal. On their own, without any prompting from me, they record their thoughts, fears, good times, etc. My boys ages are 4 and 6. Initially, I started having them keep a journal so that I could keep them busy while I worked in mine. They now work in their journals more than I! Each of us decorated and embellished our journal. For the boys, I used composition books that I picked up for .50 each. I prefer a spiral bound book for my journal keeping and a heavier cardstock type paper to withstand the paint and gels, etc. that I use on the paper, so I purchased a sketchpad type book for myself. It was a bit more expensive.
By the way, I love your book. I received my preorder last week and have found it to be so inspiring. I completely cleaned out and organized my art studio this past weekend. You can actually feel the creative energy flowing freely again instead of being “stuck” behind my giant piles of projects!
you could do a paper bag album. have them already put together. They can then paste paper to their albums and draw or paste pictures and journal. I think it’d be a pretty simple start to introduce scrapbooking, and wouldnt take too much time. good luck figuring something out!!
My thoughts on this would be to have the girls look around their own house..do they have construction paper, wrapping paper and items like this that they can use to be backgrounds on their pages? Have them work on some at home for fun and to show off to their friends when them come to the meeting. I know my three year old loves making her own stuff like this.
I still remember fond memories of Brownies and Girl Scouts. Here’s an idea… (you might need a co-leader to help you) pick a day to make cookies or some other baked goods. (To make it faster, you could premake them and just have them decorate them.) Have someone take pictures of the girls, making sure everyone is in at least 2-3 pictures. Then as the baked good of choice is in the oven and/or the girls are doing another activity (maybe decorating a page to put the pictures?), you (or your co-leader) can upload photos and print them. They can then choose their pictures and paste them in. Voila… fun with food and scrapbooking all under an hour! 🙂
how about a memory sash/vest. take a picture each time of the memorable part of their activity and then you can use photo transfer paper to iron it onto a sash at the end of the year. They can write on the sash, autograph each others, etc. kind of like the sisterhood of the travelling pants, but G-rated.
I’d give them each some disposable cameras so they can take pictures of stuff they want to remember (and I’d make up ‘cue cards’ before somethings (like Brownie event dated 11/11/07). I’d also start making ‘kits’ with paper, stickers, other embellishments in ziploc bags so that once the pictures are developed, you can drop them in the bags to work on.
Hi, Aby,
My favorite thing ever is to use chipboard which Archivers will give you if you just ask for it (and sometimes they’ll even throw in a few extra sheets if I get McKenzie to ask for some!) to make albums. You could cut these 12×12 sheets into 6×6 and get 2 albums of of each sheet of chipboard. Then the girls could paint the covers their favorite color or cover with patterned paper or cardstock and mod podge (way fun!) the covers to keep them from ripping . You can punch holes in the chipboard with a crop-a-dile and use binder rings to hold the album together and of course tie little pieces of ribbon to the binder rings to make the album extra cute (because it’s all about making things EXTRA cute, isn’t it?.) Then the only thing you would have to buy is paint (cheap), binder rings (even cheaper), 6×6 page protectors (or just hole punch card stock for the pages), and some ribbon.
My other favorite idea is the one I got from Gretchen Schmidt’s summer class last summer where she took the $1 4×6 album from a discount store, decorated the cover, and punched a hole on the album spine to put a label for the pictures that were included in that album. She just filled hers with 4×6 photos, but to make it more fun and more of a scrapbook, the Brownies could crop their photos to add patterned paper, letter stickers, etc. or they could put a 4×6 piece of cardstock on the left hand side to tell the story of the picture on the right hand side. Or they could just use some journaling strips (from scraps, of course) to put their journaling directly on the photos. Ok, I just realized I’m rambling here, and I probably have several run on sentences and/or sentence fragments, so I should probably end this post.
Just wanted to let you know I signed up for the “Organizing Your Kids’ Room” teleclass. Yeah! Looking forward to that! We did some pre-class work this week on the girls’ closets and sort of tackled some of their toys, but I soon found out it’s me that doesn’t want them to get rid of some of the “baby toys” not them. Hoping you’ll have some ideas for “Mommy letting go.” I’m most looking forward to the class to get their playroom organized. Can’t wait to get started!
And I also have to tell you how much I loved the book. It came last week (the day before I left for a trip), so I threw it in my bag and read it while I was gone. I got so excited about the russell & hazel mini journaling albums and story albums, I ordered them from your store while I was still on the road…and I couldn’t believe they were already here when I got home on Friday (I didn’t order them until Tuesday night…now THAT is some kind of customer service!) But back to the book…I devoured it! It’s not only beautiful, but it is just amazing! So many great ideas! Can’t wait to use some of them! Maybe your next teleclass will be scrapbook space organizing???
Happy Friday!!!!!
Ha…we did this with my 15 yr old’s troop when she was a brownie! We took pictures of things all year long and a couple times a year we (the leaders) got together and reprinted pictures of the individual girls so they’d all have some of themselves plus we tried to get pics at events…ie pumpkin farm…indiv girl w/pumpkin…plus group pic.
we could have done it better.
We used 3 ring binders, 8.5 x 11 cardstock…then die cut appropriate things for each event we scrapped…
Keep in mind…some of the girls will do absoutely nothing…some will love it. It’s sort of up to them to do as much or as little as they want just so that the satisfy the badge requirements.
We used glue sticks. It was cheaper and easier.
Pain in the patootie to go to the teacher’s center to do a zillion die cuts…but that was cheap.
Good luck…was fun…we still have the scrapbook…it’s held up fine…(she was in 2/3rd grade…now is in 10th)
As an activity while all the girls are arriving for the meeting or getting ready to leave (those are the times that seemed to be completely choatic with my daughter’s troops ), put out index cards (or scraps of paper) and pens for them journal about a badge they’ve just earned, the badges they’re working on that week or other Brownie stuff that’s happening. Even if they only have time to jot a sentence or two down, they’ll have the whole year of meetings and what they did for in their scrapbooks.
One fun idea is to use a circle ring clasp (accent with lots of fun grograin ribbon) and several large tag shaped chipboard pieces – each piece could be a different color – each color could represent one of the items from the girl scout law such as “respect authority” (they could have a photo of them with their leader) “use resources wisely” (have a photo of them recycling) “being friendly and helpful” (a photo of them smiling their cute brownie girl scout smile)…
I also think a paper bag album is a great way to go. Keeping everything streamlined is a great way to save $$ and time. You create the “master” book and all they have to do is copy it, add pictures and journaling. If you have access to a costco, they have some greast glue sticks (i think Scotch) that are inexpensive and work great!
Count how many meetings/activities you will have during the year. Have the girls make that many background pages. Then once a quarter, have them add pictures from those meetings and activities.
Paper bags or envelopes are great, inexpensive ways to make albums. And, they can tuck mementos or journaling inside the pockets.
Maybe this has already been mentioned, but how about having each girl create a 6×6, or 8×8 page about the favorite badge she achieved this year, or a special girl scout event, or how they helped someone in need through scouts. All the pages could be photocopied and a mini album created of their year together. By the time everyone creates their own page and all pick something different it could be a reminder of the whole year with the troop. Good Luck!
What about an index card album. Bind as many index cards together with craft binding rings (I think that’s what they are called). You can add as many pages as needed and everyone can decorate their front and back covers as desired. This is a relatively inexpensive way of making a fun album. Each week you can give them a card to take home and journal on and bring back the next week. You can leave space for photographs to be added when they are available.
Enjoy!
I am organizing a scrapbook time for my son’s cub scouts. I have several ideas for this project.
Get large size note cards. Let the kids decorate the cards,laminate the cards and put a ring in one corner then they have a small portable book. The second idea is to use the plastic report folders,place the folders in a binder and the papers fit in the slot easily. Plus,they could add to the folders throughout the year.
Actually, the first thing I thought of when I read this was a post on Stacy Julian’s blog back in July. She was talking about a “photo album scrapbook” that one of her classes made for her. They took a 2-up 4×6 photo album and each person too 1 page (2-4×6 photo slots) and did a picture and journaling about the class.
You could make a list of possible topics and let the girls know each week that they need to find a picture about badges (for instance). That gives them a week to come up with a picture and supplies if they want. They could put the picture in the top slot(4×6 or cropped and decorated) and journaling in the bottom slot.
I think this would be good if you have a wide range of interest. Girls who aren’t that interested in doing a lot of cropping and embellishing can do something really simple (1 photo w/ journaling on an index card w/ stickers). But girls who are really interested in “getting scrappy” can crop and collage and glue and paste to their hearts content…without having a big canvas (and big amount of time) to deal with.
I’d use preprinted questionaires to help with their journaling. You could make them on colored paper and say things like: My favorite badge was ______ and then include a photo of them working on the badge. Be sure to include their uniforms in a photo. I still have my scarf from my church girl’s club – fun to show my girls!
The first thing that came to my mind was, “What a great way to use up your scraps!” Also, put a bunch of your old embellishments in little bowls and let them use those as well. DIe cuts are inexpensive and easy, and you could asloput out a few sample pages to get their ” creative juices” flowing. What a fun project!!!
One of my best and fastest albums was a 6×6 for 4×6 photos and 2×6 strips of patterned paper, a little journaling and a few embellishments and I was done in a couple of hours. Fun.
Lisa
How about a tag album? Oriental Trading has some cute ones for cheap (or you could make them if you wanted). The girls could leave some blank for journaling, and decorate some for adding pics to, or just to have decorated!
I hope to get my hands on the Organized Scrapper book very soon!
Thanks for the contest and good luck!