Kid Created Disney Autograph Books

          My son is especially interested in getting autographs from Disney characters, even playing at home that he is different characters and giving us his autograph. He even tries to talk in the different character's voices. He's hilarious. Getting autographs in a book was fun for both of my kids, but I wanted them to be able to make it their own, with the picture I took of them and the characters alongside it when it was all said and done. On our last visit to Disney World, I brought journaling blocks for the kids and some photo safe markers. An added bonus was that choosing the right color paper and pen for the character they were waiting in line to see made the time go a little faster. I had put stickers on some of the papers ahead of time, knowing that we would see certain "people".

         Once we were home from our trip and ready to reminisce, I got the pictures printed and bought them each their own photo safe tape runner. I had scrapbooks on hand that I got them years ago, not knowing what for. Next, I got out the Disney stickers. I have quite a collection of photo safe stickers, but I didn't let them go through my stuff, instead I gave them a few options to choose from, so they could still get what they wanted. My 11 year old daughter finished both her entire tape runner and  her photo album in one sitting. She didn't want to mat any of her pictures, or add anything. She felt that the autograph and the photo were enough. She may have added a few stickers, but not on every page. My 5 year old son however took 3-4 days to finish his album. He was very careful with his tape runner, and really like adding embellishments. He came up with some clever ideas, like adding an eye to an "M" for the Monsters Inc. monsters. The pages shown here are his  pages.

 I remember scrapbooking with my daughter at the same age, and I think she liked it a lot more then. Perhaps if I made it a regular activity, she would spend more time on it.

Another great thing about these albums was that it gave them someplace to put the extras they had gathered. There was a baseball type card from Wreck it Ralph & Vanellipe, and a bookmarker from Belle. These books truly are a scrapbook, because the pages aren't covered. (which isn't ideal, but as this isn't for posterity, it will suffice.) My little man enjoys looking through his album. It's something they put their own personal touch on that they can keep to remind them of their trip.

 

Products used: 

 

photos ordered online from York Photo

 

small scrapbooks from Ikea,

 

 stickers from various places, most bought at Downtown Disney World stores over the years

 

Creative Memories journal blocks and pens

(characters need thick pens so that they can grip them. However I did run into a few character handlers that wanted me to use their pen which wouldn't write on the costume. I just pushed for using my own photo safe pen & they let us.)

 

 

 

 

The good, the bad, and scrapbooking

Our last day of the tripday 3 of being bitten

2nd to last day, unable to keep anything down

I have been scrapbooking an awful lot. I haven't been completing my 7 pages a day lately because I found that the only way to do that was to stay up very late at night and I was getting exhausted and grumpy. So, I have been doing what I can. I finished my daughter's Disney vacation from last year (taking up 1 1/2 albums) This vacation contained some of the hardest pages for me to scrapbook. It was that reason that I had trouble getting through it. We had a rough time on our vacation last year, having bed bugs for a week. My daughter was bitten the longest and had the worst effect from it, so it was difficult to scrapbook and journal about that. I know things could be worse, but while I'm mindful of that, it doesn't make it any easier!

Today marks a year since we first found the bite marks on her and began the week (and a day) of misery. It was fitting that I sat down with her tonight and read her the just completed scrapbook for the first time. I usually try to keep things positive in my kid's albums. This time, I did something that I haven't done before. I told the story of our vacation as I always do, including some of the bad, but not all, and then on the last page, I typed out the story from my point of view. I wrote honestly and included every detail I hadn't added previously. At the end of it, I really stressed to my daughter that in life, bad times do happen and that I hoped that she would remember that there were good memories made as well. As I finished reading it to her, she leaned back against me and smiled. Her eyes were a little wet, but she didn't say a word.

Scrap Happy!

Don't Ignore the Signs!

Ever since I started to scrapbook digitally, it has changed the way I take pictures. I take a lot more pictures now that I can use as a background or "sticker" of sorts. I like to take pictures of all kinds of things and add them to my traditional scrapbooks, too. The above picture is of my husband and daughter in a restraunt. I took a pic of the sign outside the restraunt and adhered it to the picture.

Below: I used the "Celebrate Today" picture as a decoration for my journaling box. Believe it or not, this was a napkin that I took a photo of!

Another sign is used on this page as a title sticker of sorts.

I have been a scrapbooking fiend lately. My goal is to complete 7 pages a day and I have been pretty close to meeting that goal. I am so tired some days because I scrapbook mainly after I put the kids to bed and I can spend an hour on a page design easily. I'm working on Disney pages. I have created a lot of pages that I like. Coming soon: Scrapbooking Ideas Specifically for Disney Parks, Tips on Hiding your Imperfections and Making your Photos and Pages Blend Together.

Scrap Happy! I am!

It's beginning to look a lot like Disney!

It's almost December! It sure is cold enough to be, isn't it?! I have been scrapping away and have almost finished my Disneyland trip from this August. I only need to journal it. I feel like I have been neglecting my family for the sake of catching up, but it's actually good for me to sit still and not rush around doing too much since I only have a month of pregnancy left. (I'm perfectly able to rush around, but when else will I have the excuse to sit still?) Now, if I could only figure out a way to scrapbook as I nurse, I'd never get behind! ...hmmm...



Some of the pages that I did, I absolutely love! I'm used to doing Disney albums that coincide with the Christmas season, so I've been somewhat confused as I was scrapbooking this trip, listening to Christmas music, but not using any Christmas things on the pages. I'm serious! It's been different! Creative Memories came out with all new Disney sets, and that has been fun to use, because everything is new. I can't wait to finish journaling so that I can show this book off!

Scrap Happy!

The post below has a picture of one of my favorite pages from this Disney trip. Take a look at it!

Using a Map

This picture is from a page I did in my daughter's Disneyland album. I'm not able to put the picture I took of the page I'm talking about here onto the blog at this time!

This page is one of my favorites. I loved that my daughter was learning to read the maps while we were on this trip. I liked letting her lead the way. This page is simple. I cut one of the California Adventure maps to fit the 12x12 page, covered it with a piece of vellum, and put the pictures right on top. In order to adhere the map to the page, I used a tape runner. To adhere the vellum to the map, I used clear photo tape. I also put some adhesive in the middle of the map, using frosted splits to do this, so that you wouldn't see them. I often "Disney-up" my stickers and pages in subtle ways. This time, I simply used a mickey punch to add a Mickey to the top sticker.

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Her first look at Disneyland!

When we walked up and saw Disneyland, I was somehow able to get this perfect picture of my daughter's face in absolute bliss as she saw the park for the first time. We had a great vacation in CA! I took over 500 pictures of our time with family and sightseeing as well as the wedding we attended. (The real reason for our trip!) My daughter now wants to live at Disneyland. Since my husband and I haven't been to Disneyland since our visit 8 years ago, we had never seen California Adventure, and we really enjoyed our time there. We found the parks to be more detailed and different in little ways than the same rides they have in Disney World. We liked the little differences, since we have gotten very used to things at WDW. It was nice to notice the extras. For the most part, we found these differences in the rides, fireworks and parades to be for the better! We do think that the haunted mansion and tower of terror are better in Florida, however. Another difference was the weather! We never saw a cloud in the sky! It was very hot, in fact, you had to work to keep hydrated. The people in California do not impress me. I'm sorry, but it was my experience that had me thinking of them as rude. They shove right past you, knocking into you, without even an "excuse me" or an apology! They curse, push and even the castmembers would ignore you at times. I left CA thinking I wouldn't want to live there. They can have all that nice weather; I'll stay near the nicer beaches and have seasons, thank you very much!

Tip of the Day: When I got to Disney, I asked a photgrapher to take our picture. Thankfully, he told me that my camera was on the wrong setting, and Will was able to fix it so that all of my pictures at Disneyland would be taken as clearly as possible. I noticed that my camera would change settings often, I guess because I was taking it in and out of the camera bag a lot and buttons were getting bumped. Check the setting really quickly when you pull out your camera.

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Scrapping and loving it!

This page design came to me as I looked closely at the border of the picture on the upper right hand corner. It took awhile to punch all of those mickey shapes out, and then I even cut some of them because I wanted them to go right up to the border of the page. I adhered these with the regular tape runner as well as the CM glue pen. I even put 3 silver Mickeys on the page, and those are actual confetti from Disney World. Here's a close up:

I started scrapping again, and I really have been booking! I completed my Disney World trip last night, and now I need to find my notes so that I can go back and journal all 8 days. I still have the cruise to do as well. I feel so far behind. Having the room set up so that I can scrap anytime has been just what I needed. I also have had to cut way back on the anount of things I do around the house, since I get backaches or lower abdomen pain if I do too much house or yardwork! I have to spread my work out now, and that gives me time to scrapbook.

This is probably one of my favorite pages (above) from this trip. I love using punches and you can use different colored paper to match any page you're doing! I have used some of these punches for years! I have 4 slightly different Mickey punches.

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"I see Pooh!"

The picture above was published as the photo of the week in allears.com's newsletter! Yes, that's my little girl and I took the picture! The funny thing about this picture is that I took it in November. I knew it wasn't the best picture I've ever taken, so I sat on it until deciding this week to just send it in to Allears. It was chosen immediately. I had to crop it first to get rid of the flash. It's the first time a picture of mine has been selected, and I've been sending pictures in for years!

I was sitting in a Walt Disney World restaraunt, waiting for my daughter and husband to come back from the buffet table. Our seats were right by the windows and a line had formed in front of the window as people tried to get in to eat lunch. A little boy in Mickey ears smushed his face up against the glass looking in. We were enjoying a character meal, so Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore were making their way around the tables, an awesome view for any little boy. I asked his mom if I could take his picture and she nodded, but I just didn't get the picture I wanted. I knew that it was a unique shot. So I had my husband and daughter go out there after our meal so that I could recreate the shot. This is the only one I got. I think the title had a lot to do with them choosing this picture. "I see Pooh!" is just funny!

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A magical moment!

This Disney trip was my 10th since I have been married, so you would think that I would have run out of things to photograph. As you can see, that is not the case! I adore this page! It was taken in Cinderella's castle, and I wanted it to capture the magic and the royal feel there. The paper and stickers are from the princess pack from CM. You can't tell, but the paper has little magic wands all over it! The punch is the new mickey punch, and the paper underneath , just peeking through, is from the metallic paper pack. It's silver, but looks gold due to the lighting in the room when I took the picture of the page.

Today I did a program at my local library. I had done one before where we made a border, but today, I just did a crop talk about vellum, and showed them some of my albums and the pages I had used vellum, and how I had used it. We really only have 1/2 an hour for the program, and there isn't much you can do in that time! Next week, I have encouraged everyone to bring their albums so that we can share our lives a little bit.

Quote of the Day: Ecc. 5:3 says "Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool."

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Here's how I started off each day....

Here is a picture of the page that starts off our 11th day at WDW. (on the left) I used a certain type of sticker, to keep them all the same. I used a Mickey Mouse ornament sticker. I used letter stickers to write "Day ___" in this case, 11. I always wrote, "Memories of _______", filling in blanks with the date.

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Completed ALBUM!

Yippee! I finally finished the Disney Vacation from December 2006! I was so exhausted from the endless hours of working on it, that I fell asleep as my husband and daughter looked through it! Notice the pictures at the beginning of this blog? The thin album is from the Disney Vacation the year prior to last December. If you remember, I was beside myself because I was using a whole album on one vacation! HA, HA! That's so funny now! It is recommended that you only put 40 pages in an album. But in this latest album, I did 50 pages, that's 100 if you consider each side! I have to remind you that this is BEFORE my digital camera. This book is #11 for my daughter's short life so far of 5 years.

Things I did different in this album:

I tried to only take spontaneous photos. We had professional, posed pictures taken of us by the Disney photographers, and purchased the whole CD of our stay for $99. It had 245 pictures on it.

I put a Stitch on every page. It was challenging to make it that way, but my daughter does love to look for them, so I guess it was worth it!

I scrapbooked in chronological order, which I usually do. But I started off each new day with a page showing pictures of 2 or 3 things that we did over the course of that day. I kept the photos off to the side, and used the other half to record things that happened that day. I usually don't have pictures for everything, so this page was perfect for including things that I probably wouldn't have fit in, such as the weather, funny moments ect...

Sneak Peek!

Oh, I love the warmer weather! It seems like it's been winter forever! I have been dedicating a lot of time to scrapbooking. The more pages I do, the better I like them. Here is a picture from our Disney trip. It's one that I just did this weekend, and it isn't journalled yet. I love the picture of my daughter's hands holding some of the "pixie dust" (mickey confetti) so I matted my 2 favorite pictures, it being one of them. "Catch the spirit" was from the Everyday Title pack, and it's a clear sticker. I used some actual mickey confetti, and carefully sprinkled it on the sticky side of the sticker before adhering it to the page. I have challenged myself big time with this trip, by having myself put a Stitch on every page. They say that he is always taking over the Parks, so I thought it was a cute idea. Wrong! I can't tell you how hard it has been. I was doing my pages around the stitch, and what would go with him, and where. But I've changed things and am doing the page first, and lastly sticking Stitch somewhere on the page. At least my daughter will have fun fining him! I'm almost done with the Disney vacation, and then I can journal the whole album at once. Happy Scrapping or rather, Scrap Happy!

From Florida to BRRRRRR!!!!

I am just back from Disney World, where I took a lot of pictures! I really tried to get spontanious pictures, and I don't know how well I succeeded. I also discovered the negative part of having a digital camera, when in just a second, my dear husband accidently erased all of the pictures we had ever taken on his digital video camera. We will say no more about it, but I do have to tell you that we would remember yet another great picture that we had on there, and feel a twinge of pain as we reminded each other of it.

Disney has a new program that allows you to purchase a CD of all of the professional pictures you have taken during your trip, giving you the rights to those pictures. We decided to do this, and now I have plenty of pictures of our whole family from the trip, and lots of us with the characters. It's nice to know that I will be in a lot of the pictures for this trip!

We had a wonderful time, and I didn't want to come home! Our resort was amazing, we had a lot of magical moments, and had time to swim, relax and visit almost all of our favorite characters! It's late, and I'm tired, but I just wanted to stop in to say, "Hi, and I'm back!" I'll put pictures up here and there, and will start working on that album as soon as I get all of the pictures!

Disney scrapping

I have been scrapping our vacation to Disney (last December) and since I am making simple pages, I am really making headway. It's really fun to look back and see everything that we did! We had fun. I amjust getting to the day that my husband got food poisoning! Can you believe that we even have a photo of him in the restaurant he ate the ribs that we believe made him sick 14 hours later? Weird, huh? I must be nearing the end of our trip! That kind of did us in. We left early. The new Disney snap pack has patterned paper that I just love! I like to use silly little sayings and take them out of context as page titles. "Seeing Stars" -Disney Stars of course! "Parade with character" -Disney caracters! It's really corny, but I usually use the first thing that pops into my head! Hey, I'm having fun!

Cruisin' along!

I had a long night of scrapping the other night. My friend came over and I got so many pages done from my cruise! I had been having trouble starting it, so it was a great relief to actually get over that hurdle! Once I got started, I didn't want to stop! Even after she left, early in the morning, I completed at least one more page before crawling to my bed! I'm getting used to the 12x15 pages now and learning how to best use this size to compliment my layouts. I'm working the way I usually do, just completing the pages and saving the journaling for later. They are pretty plain, but very ME! Since I was feeling so far behind, I decided not to crop my Disney pictures into any shape more complimented than a square or rectangle. This did save time. Now that I'm past that part of the trip, I am allowing myself to crop the photos into shapes. I have finished the first 3 days of our cruise so far! Remember, I took pictures of everything, so this might take awhile!

Tip of the Day: I am always a very strict chronological order scrapbooker. But for trips, I've found that I need to change my rules just a bit. For instance, in my cruise book, I am doing the pages in order of the days, but I started out with us in port, then the lobby of the ship, our room, and then what we did on the ship that first day. I took pictures of all the towel animals we found in our room and will do a 2 page spread of that later. I have always done this with Disney trips, usually having a few pages dedicated to our resort that vacation, and sometimes pictures taken on different days, but from the same park. This works best for me, because I tend to take a picture here and a picture there, and this is the only way to tie them together.

Scrap Happy!

Life Through the Eyes of a Three Year Old

So, it's been awhile since I've written and scrapped, since I've been very busy getting everything ready for our guests. I'm pleased to announce that my sister-in-law and little tiny niece are here! I was able to pick up my daughter's roll of film in my spare time :) , and the pictures are so interesting! What other way can you see the world literally through your child's eyes? One memorable picture is of her dad and I at our brick, the one he bought me with our names on it and the date of our wedding. It is also very strange to see myself as the subject in so many pictures! I'm usually the one TAKING the picture! Sure, many of them are tilted at an odd angle, and our heads might be chopped off completely in one or 2, but what's important is that it's her memories, recorded on film. There is one picture that really stood out to me. It's a close up of my chest, and at first that might seem like an automatic dud, but looking closer, I noticed the dogtag that I wear around my neck to remind me to pray for my brother. I started wearing it daily just days before she took the picture, because he is in the Army and had just gotten deployed while we were at Disney World. This is one picture that will be treasured, not for the quality of the photography, but for the time in my family's lives that was captured and held forever in that one, fuzzy picture.

Scrap Happy!