A Birth Story

The opportunity to create a birth story layout comes rarely and with that wonderful, miraculous opportunity comes a rather monumental feeling of responsibility.

I recently attended one of my cherished crop weekends where I have an extended period of time to work on my scrapbooking projects. I had our son's birth pictures packed to bring with me and, just as I was leaving, I was rummaging through my old Club Scrap kits and came across this one called 'Once Upon A Time'. I thumbed through, looking at the papers and quotes.

The more I looked, the more I thought, "how perfect - a storytelling-themed paper set for a birth story!!" So I threw it in the car on top of all my other supplies and took off!


I started out the weekend working on a bunch of other projects, but the birth story idea and the paper set just kept popping into my head.

New ideas,
new possibilities...

everything percolating and starting to gel together into a solid idea of what I wanted artistically.

Come Saturday morning, I could no longer ignore the ideas parading (& trumpeting) around in my head. I sat down to undertake the birth story layout!

First, I had this gorgeous photo that I knew I wanted to feature. I mounted the entire photo on foam board and trimmed it to fit between the title words which were already printed on the paper. Before I attached the board to the paper, I wanted to fancy-up the title just a bit. You can't tell in the photo, but I used a glaze pen on the words "Once Upon A Time" to make them look like they are embossed. I love the intricate detailing I can get with the Glaze pens!! It was my first time trying them out. They're fabulous!



After the glaze dried, I attached the board to the paper. Then, I stitched beads onto twine to add more dimension to the framing of the photo and created a multi-fiber accent to adorn the corner. For me, a layout is rarely complete until it has some type of fiber making an appearance...


On the companion page, I wanted to find a unique way to include a written account of the birth story. I decided to mount the entire page on foam board and cut out a shadow-box-like spot for a booklet I created. I love that one of the quotes from the paper set I used says, "My story starts here"! Absolutely perfect.






Finally, I created a mini-book and wrote out his birth story by hand. Whew! That took awhile, but it was worth it! I really love the way it turned out!

In fact, I love the way the entire layout turned out. It may be one of my favorites EVER. It was worth every minute I spent on every little detail! I will forever cherish this artsy journal entry of a momentous event in our lives.