40th birthday surprize scrapbook ideas

Do you have a big enough group to come up with 40 pages? One for each year (not meaning you have to come up with something that happened each year of his life, just to keep with the "40" theme).

I think I'm one of the few here who does all my albums in 8.5x11, so it's doable from my perspective. You might find that one of the other sizes works better for you/this project.

For my parents' 40th anniversary, I sent a letter out to friends & family asking them to share memories of my folks. Since it was an 8.5x11 album & I do use sheet protectors, it was really easy when people used 8.5x11 paper to just slide the pages in as received. For those who wrote on smaller pages (or sticky notes on the back of photos, as one of my cousins did), I scanned them & made a computer-generated page or attached the page to a 8.5x11 page.

Good luck! And have fun with your project.

Alicia

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To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and act and think alike. -- Gene Roddenberry

I'm currently making a ministry memory album for my parents. (Dad's been a pastor for almost 38 years.) I simply asked people to talk about ways my parents ministered to them and asked for cards &/or letters, and of course pics if they could include them. Your instructions to people sound great!! I've had a lot of people tell me "I'm not good with words..." so giving them headings like you've mentioned should alleviate that. Great idea!

I'm assembling this one in 12 x 12 format, but that's just what I'm comfortable with. For my purposes, and since I've gotten a lot of letters on 8 1/2 x 11 paper from people, the 12 x 12 format is working very well. The only drawback I've found using the scrapbook page protectors is with cards. I'm either going to end up buying special pull-out things or Dad will have to pull pages out of the protectors. That might be something to think about for the assembly of your book.

I only have one layout scanned in right now. It's on MC's webshots account at:

Also, you might want to checkout the RCS website for lots of helpful scrapbooking tips and info.

Good luck!

Deb, a suggestion about the cards....I have used cards in my LO's and what I do is place the completed LO in the page protector mark where the card starts and stops the remove the LO, place a cutting mat in the page protector then use a craft knife and straight edge to cut between the marks. The after removing the cutting mat reinsert LO sliding front of card through slit you just created. Does that make sense? Hope so,

I would definitely keep it down to 8 1/2x11. 12x12 is a bit big for a gift. I think you have some great ideas already though. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Katrina in KS

Makes perfect sense! In fact, I think that's what I'm going to have to do. I'm just concerned about protecting the fronts of the cards that are sticking through the protecter sheet.

Just be sure you practice first that way you'll know you're doing it right. I would hat e for you to do that in the middle of a full album then have to replace it. lol then you'd be coming to my house to shoot me! LOL

No, I wouldn't shoot you. I would simply take the whole darn thing to your house and make you cut all the slits. LOL (Hey, but at least I would get to see you!) I just gotta find time to see you sometime. I've been back in LR over a month and still haven't seen you since we moved in....bummer!

OK, so maybe we should all see each other one evening! We don't seem to be doing too well on the Saturday thing!

Evenings are good for me.

mee too...

OK Ladies, pick the evening! Monday or Tuesday of next week or any day of the week after Thanksgiving. There is also a possibility on Dec 11th, if Kenda is available for a few hours. Now where is our fourth RCS from LR?

Monday of next week would be better for me than Tuesday. I'll probably wind up spending Tuesday night packing for our Thanksgiving trip to MIL's. Any night the week after Thanksgiving should be good, too. Oh, wait, Wednesday's are out because of church. Good news though! DH doesn't have to take the business trip that was scheduled for Nov 29th - Dec 9th! So evenings just got even better! :-)

I work Monday so Tuesday.....Looks like Tuesday is out for Deb. Maybe the following week would be better......I'm free the following Monday and Thursday, the 29th and and 1st....

OK, why don't we make it Monday, Nov 29th at my place. That way if we're having too much fun, we can meet again on Thursday, LOL!

Sounds good to me!