Cre8iveCindy: 1st Grade for Steve

So I'm working on the Groh family books right now and wanted to share another piece of my creating with you. This project came together when my husband's dad passed in 2013 and it became evident his mother had memory issues. Turns out she has Alzheimer's and needed to be placed in a home. She is doing wonderfully there and enjoys that she has friends from church that live there, so it's OK. Not like the horror stories you hear about putting parents into homes.

My husband's mother took a large amount of photos and they all got sent to my house. Ugh! What am I going to do with them? This is what I came up with. Each boy gets a book and then there will be a family book that can live at someone's house. I'm using the We Are Memory Keepers Albums made Easy "system". The only "problem" is the pictures aren't 4x4 like the sleeve you put them in. I have to mat each one on some cardstock or patterned paper so the photos don't fall out. It's a job matching the colors with the picture colors and making sure it's not too girly.

This layout is one that I had to scrap on regular 12x12 paper and use a different protective sleeve then the 4x4. The background paper is by Kaiser Crafts and the left side patterned paper is by Deja Views. It and the title patterned paper were scraps from my scrap tote that I thought worked well. The title is cut from Cricut and the digital cartridge is called K-12. The embellishments came from Little Yellow Bicycle.

This is the other side of page where I do the 4x4 cards. I try to match the 12x12 and 4x4 papers together so it looks cohesive. The 1970 in the bottom left is Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge out of one patterned paper I don't know and the other is by Making Memories. The circle stamps are by Close to My Heart with Stampin Up brown ink. The other alphabet stamps are by Lawn Fawn-Harold. I find that alphabet small enough to work with these photos without having to cut them.