In 2011, I started making my Shutterfly Family Photobook. And I fell in love. After creating books "real time" for 2011 and 2012, I really wanted to go back in time to create books for 2009 and 2010 but the task was daunting.
I finally bit the bullet and in the past two months, I have created both my 2009 book (101 pages) and my 2010 book (111 pages) and I am so thrilled! I am so excited that I will have a series of these books for each year of their childhood (I'm hoping until they are 18!). The hardest part for me was just getting started. Once I did, I got into a rhythm (while watching Bachelor or American Idol) and it went pretty fast.
I am thankful that I was blogging those years because it made it a lot easier. However, if you haven't journaled your children/family, you can still document their life in retrospect. A couple tips:
- The date the photo was taken is embedded into the picture's metadata. Even just pasting photos from the same event together and marking the date is great photo-journalism.
- While simply viewing pictures from 2009 and 2010, it was amazing how many emotions and memories flooded back to me, even without having anything blogged. Much of my storytelling in these books came from my own memories that surfaced once I viewed the pictures, and not from my blog itself. If you are having trouble remembering details around any event or stage in their lives, maybe your husband remembers!
- Shutterfly frequently offers 50% off the size 12x12 photobook. I ordered the 2009 book for just shy of $90. I haven't ordered my 2010 book yet. I finished it last night and am hoping Shutterfly offers 50% off later this week (right now the 12x12 book is 30% off so I'm holding out). This, to me, is money VERY well spent!
- I like having "themes" that carry through my different books. In 2012, I used photos for the front and back covers (versus the leather cover I used for my 2011 book) and I really liked it, so I did the same for my 2009 and 2010 books. For 2009, 2010, and 2012, I also put a bible verse on the back cover that was especially meaningful for that year. For my 2010 book, I used the same bible verse that was on Max's birth announcement, which is "God is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine" Ephesians 3:20.
- Spend time proof-reading your book! Once my book is completely done, I go back in painstaking detail to re-read every single word in the book, to prevent typos or grammatical errors. In the three books I have printed so far, I only have one error and it still drives me nuts! But that's also my pet peeve (typos/grammatical errors in "published"/formal works).
2010 book
Click here to create your own Shutterfly photo book.
Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.
No comments:
Post a Comment