My LOVE album idea - Month by Month Couple Photos

I did a post a while back showing a pre-decorated copy of Nancy O'Dell's new line of LOVE products for Creative Memories.  Click here to see that post.

I used this album. 

and this 8X8 scrapbook kit to pre-decorate the album. 

It took about 45 mins and hardly any tools other than a tape runner to complete the decor.

Since my anniversary is on Valentine's Day and there are very few photos of JUST my hubby and me (mostly due to me being BEHIND the camera, not the subject of it's picture taking), I decided to use this little album as an anniversary gift with a year-long purpose.

On the title page of this album, I did a little hybrid scrapbooking using SBC 4.0 and photos of my hubby and me from previous years (the few that there are).  I printed the little hybrid as a 4X6 photo.  Though I haven't added a journaling box to the title page just yet (I gave hubby a verbal description of the album's purpose), it will explain the album's ultimate 2012 purpose.

Here is the 4X6 hybrid photo I did for the title page.

On each double page spread, I will include at least TWO photos of just me and my guy from each month of 2012 from Jan through November.  On the last page in the album will be one photo or one hybrid 4X6 from Dec 2012.

Here are the photos that went on the page spread for January (also hybrid)

And here are the photos that went on the page spread for February (again, hybrid)

Hopefully - I can keep the process up for more than one year by adding another year's worth of pages to the album (note to self:  purchase and keep a second 8X8 Love Scrapbook kit for this purpose) OR I can do the next year in a slightly different album format.

By the way - the January photos were taken on Jan 30th and 31st - it took me the whole month to get the photos!  Since I was trying to keep the album a secret so I could give it to my husband on Valentine's Day, I needed someone to take photos of us without him knowing what they were for - which turned out to be a harder task than I thought!

NOW... he can help me in making sure we get at LEAST two photos of the two of us EVERY month.  AND... we can even make sure our photos are color coordinated with the double page spread in the album since we already know what each page spread looks like.

I suggested this album idea to a few of my customers and I know at least one decided to take on the project... the ONE just happens to be the customer who is also venturing along with me trying out the Day2Day album idea!  Thanks Laura!

P2P D2D

For the past few years, I've been checking out the Day2Day albums posted on P2P.  The concept is to make an album using ONE photo from every day - 365 days in the year. 

Some other names for this type of daily photo scrapbooking are: Project Life, Project 365, etc... each has a bit of a different concept for how to go about the output of displaying your 365 photos.  Some folks are doing an online - weblog - blog type of daily photo.  I've decided to do mine digital, print the pages and have a hard copy of the project.

I've been pretty good at taking a photo Every Day!

For one thing, I have an iPhone, so I don't have to lug my big camera with me everywhere - tho. I do prefer real camera photos to phone camera photos.

I set my iPhone to beep me a reminder at 8pm every evening.  By that point, if I haven't take a photo, there is bound to be enough time left in the evening for me to snap just one!

I've also decided to create digital pages for my D2D album.  I'm using Storybook Creator Plus 4.0.  I'm putting one week's worth of photos on a page, and doing two double page spreads per month.  Each month, I will feature a new product design or power palette recently released by Creative Memories as the color scheme for my page spread.

I created a 12X12 album project in SBC but I've decided to produce the pages as digital page prints. 


I made this decision FINALLY when I received THIS ALBUM in my new cM products box that just arrived this week! 

I MOSTLY do digital scrapbooking these days - tho. I do still like traditional and I look for any chance to hybridize my scrapbooking.  I don't often get a chance to use all the fabulous specialty 12X12 coversets that make their way into the cM product line.  BUT...

So many of cM's products can now be adapted to traditional and/or digital, so I'm using the NEW Enchanted coverset with side-loading pages into which I will slip my D2D digital page prints!  The coverset is officially available to the public, along with the entire new Enchanted Power Palette on March 1st.  Check my website under new products in March to purchase one for yourself.

Here is the title page I designed for my D2D album.  Into each grey square/rectangle, I will insert ONE photo from each month, starting with January in the upper left hand corner and continuing around clockwise.  I've used designs from the SHINE products since they were released near the beginning of 2012.  I am happy to share my sbpage with you if you are a SBC user and you would like to use this for the title page of your D2D album.  Contact me at cmsher(at)gmail(dot)com if you would like to request the sbpage file.

Here is the first double page spread for January. 

For a consistent format throughout the album, I've decided to include the MONTH/YEAR on every page and also a string of date numbers across the top or bottom with the specific week's numbers bolded and typed in a bigger font.

Yes, I'm behind already...not with taking the photos but with making the pages.  Maybe I'll get to that today.  Are you on the Day2Day album wagon?  What do you think?  Do you like it?  Have you kept up with your photos for almost 2 months now?

I'm kind of undecided on whether I like it or not.  I don't feel that this D2D album replaces the Year-At-a-Glance digital album that I make for my family every year.  I don't like to be FORCED to take a photo when I am not motivated to photograph something.  I don't like to have to choose JUST ONE phone one a day when I have a slew of awesome photos to choose from.

However, I do like the idea of my photos showing a bit more of the mundane side of my life.  I can visualize a historian sometime in the very far future coming across a D2D album and perusing the photos to try to figure out the life and times of the album creator.  It would be a strange little snippet of my life to be sure.  I like the idea of photographing everyday objects like dishes, appliances, furniture, etc...  Once day, my items will be the vintage items of future generations. 





I imagine if my grandmother or great-grandmother would have done a D2D album.  I think about how interesting the commonplace ventures and objects would seem to me now, several generations into the future.  AND this idea is what makes me find the value in the D2D project that I have taken on.