Most moms have created a layout that features their children's art or school work. We've seen adorable examples of layouts that show photos of a child's masterpieces crafted from glitter and paint. Some very creative moms have even scanned in their children's lumpy bumpy projects and resized them to place in a scrapbook layout.

What I would like to suggest is to get your child involved in creating the accents you'll use on scrapbook layouts. Not only layouts about the child, but vacation, holiday, and other special-event layouts are more personal and special when you work with your child to create page embellishments.

This is a Disney World layout for our vacation album. My oldest daughter helped me create page accents by drawing small dinosaur figures onto squares of cardstock.

 

 

I gave her very few instructions and we worked together to pick out the colors and other accents that would be featured on the layout. I'm so pleased with the adorable figures she drew. I find them to be very whimsical and the perfect accent to this vacation-themed layout.

This next layout features photos of our yard. The accent pieces are hand-painted tiles. All four of my children worked together to paint small, porous tiles with special paint. They are colorful and each one is unique. Again, I let my children help decide what colors and accents we would use on this layout. They even chose the title! It has a totally different look and perspective than it would if I had worked alone on this piece.

 

 

Other ideas for kid-created embellishments are:

• painted backgrounds
• stamped borders
• thumbprint bugs or flowers
• watercolor images
• marbleized accents
• doodles
• painted wood
• shrink plastic
• hand-cut flowers or shapes

You can add these kid-crafted accents to your layout as borders, backgrounds, decorative squares, photo corners, punched/die-cut titles or accents, journal boxes, or photo mats. You also can scan them into your computer and resize and/or color them to create digital layouts with a custom touch.

Scrapbooking with your children is so fun and rewarding. I hope you'll all take some time out of your busy schedules to work with your children, creating one-of-a-kind accents and memories that will last a lifetime!