Micah ABC book

Click here to view this photo book larger

I had a lot of fun making this, because I got to use some of the crazier papers and realistic objects in my scrapbooking stash than I usually use (and some slightly girly colors, too, sigh.....) I'm nearly finished with Micah's first-year book, too (just waiting for a friend to give me some photos she took of his birthday party), and waiting for a really big sale at Shutterfly to print it!

For those interested in how-tos, I used an inexpensive program called Scrapbook Max. It does many of the same things that more expensive, difficult programs like Quark do, at a fraction of the cost (about $40) and effort. All of the "papers" and elements were downloaded for free (a great website that compiles a daily digest of freebies is http://www.craftcrave.com/; another one I used when I needed to find specific elements needed for this project (Quill, anyone?) was http://www.digiscrapdepot.com/.) You will need lots of room on your harddrive for these freebies, as it is addictive to download them! Fulfills all of my "hunter-gatherer" and bargain-hunting needs. Once you've downloaded stuff, you just drag it into your layout and re-size, re-color, and re-arrange to your heart's content (or until your baby wakes up from a nap!)