Layout by CD Muckosky
One kind of layout that I always love discovering in the galleries are layouts about adoption! I have always thought that adoption is a beautiful thing and I love reading people’s stories! There has been more than one occasion that Karen or Melissa’s layouts have put me in tears! I also get emails quite often asking about how to scrap them. I thought I would enlist a couple of team members that have adopted as well as a little help from CD Muckosky. Karen and Melissa L. each have two children they adopted from Korea, here are some of their tips:
- keep a blog with daily entries so you will be able to look back and figure out what you were doing the day your child was born
- hire a photographer to come with you and photograph you being handed your child
- keep track of all of the firsts that take place after your child joins your family
- bring a photographer again when everything is made official and legal
CD Muckosky and Stacy Julian have both adopted as well. They discuss their stories and ideas for preserving them in Paperclipping Roundtable #28 – Poopy Stuff in Our Backgrounds. You can listen to this show below.
[audio: http://traffic.libsyn.com/roundtable/prt028_wwy.mp3]
In the show Stacy talks about Gotcha Day and CD talks about this layout below. She was nice enough to send it over for me to share with all of you. You can see the hidden journaling poking out from behind the photo.
Karen sent over this layout that shares what she was doing the day her son was born (Melissa gave her the idea of keeping a daily blog and she was thrilled that it worked out) supplies are from an earlier issue of THE DIGI FILES:
Below are some more inspirational layouts from Karen and Melissa (layouts are linked to galleries with credits). If you have some tips of your own for scrapbooking adoptions, we would love it if you shared them in the comments.
Karen and Melissa say they haven’t found too many kits that are adoption specific, but often make products intended for other things work (i.e. YOU ARE HERE word art). Here are a couple products though:
Link us up to any of your adoption layouts that you want to share and give us your tips in the comments as well! 
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More than beautiful.. thank you
Randi sent me over here, and I have tears running down my cheeks. Thank y’all for sharing <3
Love this post! We are planning on adopting in the near future, and I actually have an adoption-specific kit in my store right now, if anyone is interested.
http://www.scrapartist.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=4889&cat=0&page=1
And some word art bits:
http://www.scrapartist.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=4888&cat=0&page=1
Loved them all.
I was adopted at 13 days old and have known and been loved since then. I was taught by my parents this saying and as a little bratty kiddo, i perhaps said it followed by a “nanana neener”
it goes: Adopted Children are the Best as they are the ones that were Picked!!
keep on creating, the world needs the stories & the generations need the memories!
i absolutely loved this! karen and melissa you have preserved such precious memories with amazing journaling and touch the heart pages. Love them ALL! I am also an adoptive Mom to my sweet boy who was also born in korea. in fact, karen and melissa were two of the first people that i met when i started digital scrapbooking! totally cool to see this blog post!
i’ve watched their journey being recorded. I’ve taken some tips too ! Lots of them – i don’t publish a lot of pages but i have been working on an adoption collection –forever. it’s the one piece that has been an ongoing project for me.
my scrapping tip is to preserve a history for your child – their entire story needs to be told to them – including what you were doing when you were waiting for them to come home to their forever family
scan in passports and other important papers – take photos of documents and add them to your pages. it’s all about telling the story.
Thank you so much for this wonderful post and pages.!!! fantastic!
My tip about scrapping adoption is to remember that your child’s life did not begin the moment you met them. S/He had a life before adoption and it is important to honor that.
I’ve added a few layouts to TDD’s Flickr group.
Thanks for sharing the ones in the post. Very cute and great inspiration.
LOVE the layout!! THANKS for sharing the layout and your tips!
and CONGRATULATIONS!!
This was my first page about adoption a few years ago: http://www.myscrapbookart.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=98018&ppuser=93
Since then, I’ve done several pages using the same layout (turned and/or tweaked) and coordinating colors. These pages I’ve kept private, but they include our first meet w/our birth mom, the day we brought our baby home from the hospital, and other times we have gotten together with our birth mom. These pages all go in one book and provide our daughter with her unique story.
My advice is to scrapbook adoption like you would any other topic dear to your heart. If you have adopted domestically, don’t forget about your child’s birth family. They are an integral part of your child’s story.
What a great feature! I know Karen and Melissa through the adoption process and digiscrapping. They have always been great sources of inspiration for me. I’ve done lots of adoption layouts, but my favorites are the letters that I wrote to them that covers our adoption journey start to finish. Here is an example:
Page 1 – http://www.digishoptalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=896880&title=letter-to-cindy-1&cat=2159
Page 2 – http://www.digishoptalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=896879&title=letter-to-cindy-2&cat=2159
Thanks for the links to adoption products. I love that “Gotcha Day” word art. I still haven’t fnished my daughter’s page, so I think I’ll have to get that!
LOVED that episode of PRT- Stacy made me cry sharing her adoption story. Thanks for all of the LOs, I loved seeing these.
It made me cry too!! It was a funny episode as well with many laughs!