PLEASE NOTE: Most of my Memory Keeping Q&A posts are being presented on my main blog. I decided to put this post here on the Projects blog as it feels more at home here with the images and the video.

ANDI | I know Anna is 2 now but I was wondering if you ever did a baby book for her, you talked about it. I know that she will have her own set of books like Simon but I remember you saying that you didn’t like the “pre-made” ones that you find at the store. I didn’t buy one of those either and I was wondering what you scrapped and how you did it.

AE | I’m so glad you asked about this as it spurred me to pull out her album and see exactly what I had done with it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve looked through this album – I’ve added layouts here and there but have not actually taken the time to see what I have and what I don’t have.

Here’s the original post from April 2009 where I talked about my approach to this album. I mention that there is no master plan and there really wasn’t – which resulted in what I have here – a collection of stories from her first year of life along with some other bits and pieces I saved along the way.

Here’s some things that came to mind as I looked at what’s in the album right now:

1. I know if I go back to my 2009 and 2010 photo folders I’ll find more stories I’d like to tell about Anna’s first year.
2. I’m seriously thankful that I have stories told. I’m not upset that I don’t have every little thing documented. Many of the most detailed stories came from posts I did on my blog that document all the little things that were happening with her from month to month (not on a specific schedule necessarily, but enough to get a good picture of specific points during her first year).
3. I like that I kept the well-baby visit handouts that include her weight and height.
4. The pages are going to be re-organized in chronological order. For this post and video I just took pictures and did the walk-through “as-is” so you could see it just how it is off the shelf without being fixed up.
5. I actually kinda like that I haven’t looked at it in awhile. Looking at it again over the last couple of days I have a new sense of excitement about getting some more pages done specifically for this book to round out the project. It’s a nice reminder that things can sit for awhile and all is not lost (and part of the reason it’s not totally lost is that I’ve got content to pull from in the form of stories I’ve posted on my blog).

MOVING FORWARD

After looking at what I have, here’s a list of layouts/elements I’d still like to add:

1. A layout (or more than one) about our childcare and the relationship both my kids have with the people who make a big difference in our lives.
2. Maybe a month-at-a-glance. Using a multi-photo layered template (like this one or this one or this one) I could easily go back into my monthly photo archives and grab photos from each month of her first year. I’ll share these as I do them.
3. Title page/album intro.
4. Gather up additional journaling I did on my blog and either create layouts or simply print out journaling pages similar to what I’ve done in Project Life using the Long Journalers.  This shouldn’t take too long as the posts about her are tagged as Anna (oh how I love that simple little organizational tool).
5. I also found, as I was looking through my Designer Digitals gallery and putting this post together, that I have quite a few other pages completed that belong in this album (both paper and digital). I need to see if I printed the digital pages already (which I think I did) and either get them printed or move them from the 2009 or 2010 family albums. Pages like this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one.

Here’s a video where I walk you through what’s currently inside the album:

Ali Edwards | Anna Baby Book Walk-Through from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO

• Crop In Style page protector
• Project Holder | Cropper Hopper Page Planner
• Reflections Journal/Mini Book
• Simple Celebrations 5×7 Baby Photo Books

Here’s a look at the inside of this album via the lens of my camera with links to more information about specific layouts when available.

A divided page protector opens the album and includes the notice of her birth from the local paper, our bracelets, the hospital photos, her newborn hat, etc.

BIRTH STORY. A few of these pages were featured in my Studio A column in Creating Keepsakes magazine in November 2009 (and other Studio A columns throughout the second half of 2009). The theme of the article was using your own past pages as inspiration for new pages. I used a bunch of page designs I had created that told stories about Simon’s first few months as jumping off points for these pages about Anna.

The photo opens up to reveal her birth story.

DAD AND DAUGHTER. Details about this digital layout can be found here. First featured in Creating Keepsakes Studio A column July 2009.

FIRST SEVEN DAYS | THE JOURNEY BEGINS. I love this one. One of my favorites.

I LOVE YOU.

YOU = LOVE. Details about this layout can be found here. Words came from a blog post here.

COMING HOME.

HOSPITAL PAPERS. There’s a bunch of these sprinkled throughout the book.

WAITING FOR BABY. This one will be moved forward in the album.

DOCUMENTING THE TUNES. Details on the layout can be found here. The opposite image was the photo my Mom printed out for Simon to take to school to share the story of his new baby sister. Story blogged here.

SIX WEEKS.

THE STORY OF CLOTH. Content taken from this blog post.

GENERATIONS. One of my favorite kind of layouts that shows photos from now and then. A photo of me and a photo of her and then one of us. I shared the Me & Her image on my blog here.

THE ONESIE. The binder clip is working just right at keeping it in place.

SWEET BABY. Details on this layout can be found here.

AND THE GREATEST OF THESE. From a Studio A column in 2009.

A4.

WELL BABY VISITS.

US.

HELLO YOU. Photos of Grandparents first meeting Anna and Simon being so excited to have a sister.

REMEMBER THIS. More details on this layout available here.

PLANNING. DREAMING. Another page about getting ready for her arrival.

READY TO GO.

WELCOME.

A3.

WELL BABY VISIT.

3 MONTHS.

ANNA AT 11 MONTHS. Details on this layout can be found here.

THANKING GOD. More details on this layout available here.

At the back of the album right now I’ve got some additional notes and things I’d like to include either on layouts or simply just included in the album inside a page protector.

Wow. This has been quite a little journey for me and I’m feeling really thankful for the question that spurred me to take a closer look at this album. I also really have to emphasize how thankful I feel tonight that I’ve captured so many stories on my blog in the moment. Those are the stories I love so much – the ones that talk about what she’s doing, what I love about her at a certain stage, etc. Those are the kind of memories that are just that much more difficult to recollect as times passes.

Products | Photos | Inspiration | Motivation & Time | Anna’s Baby Album

In my request for memory keeping questions post last week one of the first was about how to create photo collages in Photoshop for printing. I’ve got more answers to the other questions coming soon but wanted to begin with this tutorial.

Here’s my process for creating photo canvases in Photoshop Elements (there’s lots of different ways you can achieve these same results). Feel free to ask additional questions in the comments section below.

AE | Creating A Photo Canvas In Photoshop Elements from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

Here’s some written instructions/reminders from that go along with the content of the video:

1. File/New. Create a new canvas. Let’s say 8 inches x 10 inches at 300dpi.
2. View/Grids to turn on the grid.
3. File/Open to select the photos you’d like to add to your canvas.
4. Use the black arrow (move tool) to drag and drop a photo onto your canvas.
5. Use the corner marks to click and drag to re-size the photo. Use the grids as guides for lining things up.
6. Utilize the crop tool bar where you can set the width, height, and dpi before cropping. It would be super simple to set to 2×2 (at 300dpi) to crop your photos before adding them to the larger canvas.

OTHER TUTORIALS and IDEAS

• If you want to skip Photoshop Elements/Photoshop check out Google’s free photo editing software Picasa (thanks for the suggestion Maria). Picasa has tools to help you quickly and easily create photo collages.
• Cathy did a video tutorial on creating multi-photo grids in Photoshop for my Tuesday Tutorial series back in 2009. It’s a great tutorial that gives you a look at her process.

Today’s video tutorial shows you the simple technique of adding text to a Long Journaler or other overlay in Photoshop Elements.

Ali Edwards | Adding Text To A Long Journaler/Overlay in Elements from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

These Long Journalers (and any other PNG files) can also be opened in Word.

Here’s a video that walks you through the steps:

Ali Edwards | Adding Text To An Overlay In Word from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

DESIGNER DIGITALS QUARTERLY SALE

The Designer Digitals quarterly sale begins today. Everything in the store is 30% off through early Tuesday morning.

Here’s a look at the new products I have coming out today:

6 inch x 4 inch Journalers. This package also includes a PDF file for easy printing. I used these in Week Five of Project Life.

Sisters Word Art

Evidence Paper Collection

Evidence Tag Collection

Evidence 4×6 Overlay Collection

Go Outside Brushes & Stamps

Have a great rest of the week!

One of the key elements of my 2010 December Daily are these 6×8 overlays available through Designer Digitals. Below I’ve included a few different ways to work with these overlays including information on how to open and print the PDF file, how to open and recolor PNG files in Word, and an 8 minute video tutorial on working with the PNG file in Photoshop Elements (includes recoloring and photo-cropping information if you want to add the overlay onto a photo before printing).

When you purchase and download this package from Designer Digitals you will find that it includes the following:

1. A folder of the daily PNG files sized to 6×8 (December 1 through December 31).
2. A print-ready PDF file.
3. A preview file.
4. My terms of use (personal use only).

PDF FILE

Let’s start with what’s most likely the simplest way to get these files printed: the PDF file.

Double click on the print-ready PDF file to open – for most people it will open in Adobe Reader. If for some reason you don’t have Adobe Reader on your computer already you can download it free here.

The PDF pages include “crop-marks” that will help you trim these pages to the exact 6 inch x 8 inch size. Go to file/print and your print dialog box should pop-up.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When printing the PDF file, make sure that you have selected “shrink to printable area” rather than “fit to printable area” under Page Scaling. This will position the overlay and crop marks in the middle of the page at the correct size. If you select “fit to printable area” it will stretch the overlay and it will end up printing larger.

I printed all my overlays on Bazzill Cream Puff cardstock using my HP Photosmart B8550 printer.

PNG FILES

If you’d like more control over how the overlays look, or want to place one on a photo, or want to make any other adjustments, you’ll want to use the PNG file.

RECOLORING A PNG FILE IN WORD

You do not need to have Photoshop Elements to recolor or print a PNG file. Here’s how to do it with Microsoft Word:

1. Open a new Word file.

2. Go to Insert/Picture/From File and navigate to the PNG file you downloaded to your computer and select the day you want to work with.

Here’s what the PNG file looks like when it opens in Word.

3. To recolor the lines of the overlay, go to View and select the Formatting Palette (I’m working in Word for Mac 2008). Click the Recolor icon near the top and select More Options at the bottom of the menu to choose a color. Click the color and the overlay should automatically change to that color.

4. Print on cardstock.

RECOLORING AND ADDING OVERLAY TO A PHOTO IN ELEMENTS

I’ve put together a quick video tutorial for those of you who might be interested in learning how to recolor or add an overlay to a photo in Photoshop Elements. You can download a free trial version of Elements here. If you’d like written step by step directions for recoloring PNG files in Elements, go here.

Ali Edwards’ 2010 December Daily 6×8 Overlay Tutorial from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

One thing to keep in mind with the overlays is that in addition to being printed directly on cardstock, they also work great layered on top of a photo. More information on that is included with the video above. Depending on what photo you choose to use they might offer a great spot for journaling as well.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any additional questions on working with these overlays.

More information on the December Daily project can be found here.

Go big. That’s what I wanted to do when I saw this photo of Anna.

Go big with the photo and go big with the pattern paper.

I’ve done a few layouts in the past that incorporate full page photos like this one and this one. I love the look. I’m especially inspired by the way Laura Kurz does this (see more of her work: Two Peas | Studio Calico) and the way Karen Russell used to do it when she was scrapbooking more often.

For this photo + story I decided to create a layout that also left much of the pattern paper just as it is…lovely all on it’s own. This is a great idea for those of you who buy pattern paper but never use it because you think it’s too pretty.

TIP | Use that pretty paper. They will make more!

Here’s a look at my process for putting together this two-page layout:

(1) Begin with one full page 8.5×11 printed photo + one 8.5×11 sheet of pattern paper (I cut this down from 12×12). Here at home I’m using a HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer that has the capability of printing borderless 8.5×11. It’s a nice option for this sort of project.

(2.) To tell your story, use one of my Oval Journal Tags or a similar product you may already have in your stash (or just cut an oval from a piece of cardstock and hand-write your story). Here’s the details on using the oval journal tags in Photoshop (read on for the video tutorial):

1. Open the oval .png file of your choice from the Bread + Butter Elements: Oval Journal Tags folder.
2. Using the T tool, type your story. To add some interest mix script + serif fonts and recolor the script words. I used Wendy LP Medium for the script and MrsEaves for the serif (serif simply means a font with little “feet” at the ends of each letter).
3. Use the eyedropper tool to “grab” the same red color as is used in the oval journal tag. Use that same red to recolor the script font words.
4. Option: Recolor background area to make cutting easier. This is really an optional step. I ended up liking having the gray around the outside of the oval on my layout. To do this I created
5. Print on white cardstock.

Oval Journal Tags available at Designer Digitals.

Here’s a video tutorial that shows my process for typing my journaling on the oval in Photoshop Elements:

Ali Edwards’ Oval Journal Tag Tutorial from Ali Edwards on Vimeo. Click to view the video full size.

(3.) Cut oval from white cardstock. I did a quick cut here – it’s far from perfect and I like it that way.

(4.) Adhere the journaling oval about 2/3 of the way down the page (add a little initial card behind the oval – this one is from my random stash of stuff so unfortunately I don’t have a source for more). Trim off excess from the oval journal that goes over the edge of the pattern paper or have it overlap onto your full page photo.

(5.) Attach the Basic Grey Wander Collection Stitched Brads. Sometimes with these fabric brads I remove the back rather than sticking it through the page. It often depends on how many layers the brad will need to go through. In this case I wanted to use glue dots instead so I could stick the mini-safety pin under the fabric brad (sticks with the help of the glue dot).

Brad-backing removed with pliers. Glue dot adhered.

(6.) Mini staples and mini-safety pin added.

(7.) Celebrate another story told!

THE STORY | It’s what you do. Here, there, and everywhere. Especially on the front porch. You run from one end to the other and back again. With glee. I love seeing the smile on your face and the intention in your eyes. Speed and laughter are your friends. I also love that you want to make sure one of “your” people is always watching. It’s seems to be even sweeter with an audience. On this particular day we just had a visit from Grandpa, Grandma, Auntie Jessie & Gabrielle. You were even more excited to have an audience than usual. Keep on going sweet little girl. We love it.

SUPPLIES | Pattern Paper: Jenni Bowlin Snack Time; Oval Journal Tags: AE Bread + Butter Elements Oval Journal Tags; Fabric Brads: Basic Grey Wander Collection Stitched Brads; A Card: Vintage; Mini Stapler: Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher; Mini Safety-Pin: Tim Holtz Mini Pins

Yesterday I introduced you to a new minibook I had in progress. Here’s a look at the finished project and a quick video tutorial on working with these mini line stack word art pieces (supplies are listed at the bottom of the post):

Inside cover :

Throughout this minibook I used some of my mini line stack products from Designer Digitals.

Here’s a short video that will show you how to place a variety of .png files on one canvas for easy printing. Click through to Vimeo to view larger :

Ali Edwards’ Mini Line Stacks Tutorial from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

Intro photo :

Section One :

The embellishments I used next to each printed element were from a collection of miscellaneous products that had lost their original packaging. This is a great project for giving products like that a home.

For the page opposite each photo I created a series of journaling strips that talk about each person.

Here’s a look at the page when it was first printed:

FREE DOWNLOAD : You can download the journal strips here (8.5×11): AEdwards_ILoveYouTodayBecauseJournalStrips

I completed each sentence and then used my trimmer to cut out strips.

Section Two:

Love any chance I can get to incorporate some of his writing. This one I
scanned in and printed on the same cream cardstock I used for the word
art.

Section Three :

Section Four :

Section Five :

Last Page :

SUPPLIES:

Pink Paislee 4×8 Natural Artisan Canvas Album :  Two Peas | Scrapbook.com
Jenni Bowlin Large Rub On Butterfly : Two Peas | Scrapbook.com
Ali Edwards Mini Line Stacks : Life | You | Memory | Love | Baby
Basic Grey Fabric Brad : Two Peas | Scrapbook.com
Hamby Transparency : Mod Circles | Grandma’s Wallpaper/Cream Pattern | White Butterfly
American Crafts Chipboard Letters Plain
Pattern Papers: American Crafts Adobe Crestview Court (yellow dots) : Two Peas; October Afternoon Sunday Dishes (grey dots) : Two Peas; other specialty paper from Paper Source
7gypsies Naked Color Mini Label Stickets : Two Peas | Scrapbook.com

Today I wanted to share with you some of my most recent additions and include a video tutorial that walks you through the steps of adding these brushes to your photos in Photoshop Elements.

Ali Edwards' Hand Drawn Brush Tutorial For Photoshop Elements from Ali Edwards on Vimeo. Click to view larger at Vimeo.

Essential Words Hand Drawn Value Pack Vol. 01

Chronicles Hand Drawn Words

Words of Beauty

Training Hand Drawn Words

Travel Hand Drawn Words

Creative Life Phrases

Times of Your Life

For more information about digital scrapbooking, including links to more video tutorials, check out my series on scrapbooking with your computer.

On Tuesday I spent some time assessing the words portion of my Week In The Life album.

In reading comments and talking to people over the years of doing this project, it seems that people tend to either have a ton (as in pages & pages) of journaling or very little.

This year I found myself being less obsessed with the words. Don’t get me wrong – they did not lose their place of importance in the album one little bit. I simply adjusted my expectations and let myself go with the flow a bit more. Each day I did something a little different. Some days I wrote directly on the journaling cards. One day I jotted down almost everything I did on the front and back of an 8.5×11 sheet of printer paper. Another day I opened up a Word file and typed in stuff as I walked by the computer on the kitchen counter. Other days I just included the photo captions I included with the photos I shared here each day.

As I looked back over what I have in terms of words for this year I kept being drawn to the simple words I added to the photos when I posted them here on my blog. I haven’t decided how exactly I will incorporate those words just yet – I think I will wait until I get my photos back and try a couple things at that point (maybe creating text strips to add onto the photos).

If you are one of those people who really ran with your written documentation you will never be sorry you took the time and effort that went into collecting all that data. You may decide to type it up or simply place it in a page protector like I did above for Tuesday. I purchased an extra package of page protectors to be able to play around and include some additional pages (see more about that below).

Even if you include a full page such as this you might want to consider highlighting some of the key pieces or comments on the journaling cards. I liked having the option to use the cards for one sentence or thought or observation.

DON’T FORGET THE BASICS

“Did I capture what I wanted to with my words?” was the question I asked myself as I reviewed my collected journaling. It was helpful in making me think about some of the really basic things about my life right now. I included two cards that simply listed how old we are all and what time each of us goes to bed.

It is perfectly ok to add thoughts and reflections after the fact (meaning you didn’t write it down during your week) or to use your photos as inspiration for adding more stories. I find that including some of these after-thoughts adds another layer of richness to my album.

As I go through the “stuff” I collected last week I do things like fold receipts, crop random mail pieces (like a Netflix envelope) and other papers, etc. I didn’t end up gathering very much extra stuff this year – a few things per day. If you have more consider creating an additional 8.5×11 page and collage a bunch of your “stuff” together, add more baseball card page protectors, or use a page protector at the end of your album to hold some of the larger pieces.

CREATING CUSTOM-SIZED PAGE PROTECTORS

One of things I love to do in albums such as this is to trim and stitch page protectors to custom sizes. I did this back in 2006 with my Disneyworld album and it was a great solution for working with a bunch of papers that were different sizes.

So far in this album I created one for the campaign piece above and two for smaller sheets. It’s really a nice way to include random sizes that aren’t full 8.5×11 sheets. For papers that are shorter than 11 inches tall I simply trim off the top (cut to size with the paper inside as a guide). I find that this works best with papers that are tall enough to keep at least two of the holes on the page protector for the binder.

To create these custom sized page protector pockets I start with a 8.5×11 (or 12×12 if that’s the album size I’m working with) and I slip my paper inside. Next I trim off the top (if it is shorter) using my trimmer – yep – just lay it right on there and slide the blade back and forth.

Next I take it over to my sewing machine (with the paper still inside) and do a straight stitch down the side using the paper as my guide. I usually stitch about 1/4 inch away from the side of the paper. After stitching I bring it back to my trimmer and trim off the excess page protector (again about 1/4 inch from the stitch).

Want to see how I run a page protector through my machine? I recorded a short video here:

Stitching On Page Protectors from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

My journaling approach in 2008 was a little different. You can read about that process (and how I used The Story of Today templates) here.

I hope that many of you will be taking some time this weekend to get your album creation process in motion. Remember, there is no right or wrong way! I am getting excited to see your albums coming together and I would love to feature some of them next week. Feel free to send me some samples of your work at ali@aliedwardsdesign.com. Please put Week In The Life Example in the subject line.

Week In The Life : Collage Layered Template Tutorial from Ali Edwards on Vimeo. Don't forget that you can click on the link to view larger.

Yesterday I put together a video tutorial (10 mins +) that will show you my process for working with the digital collage pages in my Week In The Life 8.5×11 layered template album. I hope this is helpful for those of you who are choosing to use the templates either as part of a hybrid or digital album.

Look for a new post tomorrow that talks about my process with the words.

Click
here for a complete list of Week In The Life posts.

DESIGNER
DIGITALS SALE

In honor of National Scrapbook Day Designer Digitals is marking down
the store 20% from now through Sunday morning at 6am.

Here's a few of my newest products you might want to consider for your next project (or to add to your Week In The Life album): 

Memory Lifelines

This Is The Day Vol. 2

Week In The Life Mega Twill Pack

Hand-Drawn Numbers

And since Mother's Day is coming up, you might consider a set of Mom Word Art.

Seven little days in a life. There it went. 

I always feel a little strange on Monday morning when I wake up and don't start taking photos right away (and a little bit of relief as well). This is an intense, in-depth project. It's a whole lot of work but one of the coolest projects I have created since I started scrapbooking.

Each time I tackle the "putting together" phase of Week In The Life I do things a little different. Today I want to share with you my process for going through my photos
and how I chose which ones to place where, which to enlarge, which
to crop, etc. Some of it will be done after printing, but for the most
part I am going to make a plan before uploading.

This year I'm having Scrapbookpictures.com print my photos vs. printing them here at home. I definitely considered printing at home, since that's what I normally do, but with this many at one time I think it was easier for me to upload. And as you will see later on in this post, I'm pretty sure it was less expensive as well.

Remember this?

I'm still definitely following my design plan for this album. For each day I have a Daily Opener, a baseball card divided page protector (front & back), and a photo collage page. 

HELLO PHOTOS

Each night during this past week I uploaded my photos to my computer.
At that time I went through and did a quick delete of any photos that
were obviously not going to be used (triplicates, seriously blurred, mistakes, etc). Since I was taking over 100 photos
per day (and I knew there was no way I would use them all) I was pretty ruthless about which ones I deleted.

NOW HERE'S THE DEAL : I did take around, or over, 100 photos each day of my week. In my experience, 100 photos doesn't really mean "100 photos that I want to frame and hang in my house" or "100 photos that must be crammed into this album no matter what." 100 photos usually means about 20 of Simon & Anna chasing each other and wrestling in the living room…one of which I will use in this project. It means 5 shots of my lunch…one of which I will use. It means 5 shots of Simon and I in the mirror…one of which I will use. You get the point.

Out of 100 photos I average about 30 or less that I really want to use per day. This is the reason that I always encourage people to take more than you think you will use. It's this point in the process that having more is really a benefit because you have more choice when it comes to telling the story of your life at this point in time.

Yesterday I went through all the photos again and got serious. I created canvases, pages, etc (read below) to be uploaded. It took me most of the day to organize, edit, crop, etc. Even though it was a really long day, it is really fulfilling and eye-opening and cool to see a whole week in photos all together in one place. 

I encourage you to make a plan for yourself to get this album done. Set aside some time each night to address your photos. One night for deleting. One night for selecting and uploading your daily openers and collage pages. One night for working on your divided page protector pages, etc.

DAILY OPENER PHOTO

As I looked through all my photos to select which ones would be my main image for each day there were definite favorites. Through this process I realized that what I wanted for these intro pages was variety – each one showing a little something different about life right now (the black and white image above will be the opening photo for Wednesday). 

I ordered 8, 8×10's that I will crop to 8×8.5 when they arrive (one for each day of the week and one for the intro page).

In years past I have used only photos of myself as the main photo. This year I'm branching out and including a photo of Simon, a couple of Anna, a couple of me, one of food, the one of Chris above, and one with all of us.

There's no right or wrong in choosing an opening photo. If you have a ton of photos you really want to include you might consider creating a collage in the daily opener photo space. For me, I love the enlargements contrasted with all the smaller photos throughout each day.

JUST A NOTE: EMBRACE THE PHOTOS YOU HAVE. This project takes long
enough without going through and adjusting every single photo trying to
get it just perfect. Embrace those photos that aren't perfect -
what a great reflection of real, everyday life.

COLLAGE PAGES

Next I attacked the collage pages. I decided to tackle these second, before the baseball card page protector pages, because of the variety of size and orientation and ability to pick just which photos I wanted to be highlighted.

To create my collage pages I used the 8.5×11 digital templates I created for Designer Digitals. The package includes seven different layered templates. My process for this part was simple: open the template, drag photos into Photoshop, mask them into the spaces on the template, save as a jpg and upload to the developer.

So how did I choose which photos to use on the collage pages? The collage pages are really a collection of my favorites photos and/or ones that fit the designed spaces (like the really vertical shot of Simon swimming above). Again I look to create variety and include different times, places, people, colors, etc.

As some of you noticed throughout the week, when I take photos I take almost exclusively horizontal shots. This is just my personal preference. I know coming into this project that I will be cropping many of them. I also know, from expereince, that part of what I love about this project is seeing the "pieces of life/pieces of the whole" that show through the cropped shots.

BASEBALL
CARD PAGE-PROTECTOR PHOTOS

After selecting the photos for the daily openers and the photos for the collage pages I worked on rounding out each day with photos for the baseball card page-protectors. 

For uploading to scrapbookpictures.com and for printing I decided to create canvases in Photoshop that were 5 inches x 7 inches. On each 5 inch x 7 inch canvas I was able to fit 4, 2.5 inch x 3.5 inch photos.

For most days I ended up with about 12 (there's 18 pockets available) photos which will leave room for the journaling cards and other "stuff" I collected throughout the week.

I tend to follow a pretty simple cropping and saving procedure in Photoshop. Here's a video tutorial that walks you through that process (click to view larger on Vimeo):

Ali Edwards Week In The Life : Photo Crop Tutorial from Ali Edwards on Vimeo.

Here's the written how-to for Photoshop Elements:

1. Open your photo.
2. Go to Image/Resize/Image Size.
3. Change the Resolution to 300dpi and adjust the height to 3.5 inches. This should automatically adjust the width to 5.25 inches.
4. Using the crop tool, drag a crop box that is 2.5 inches wide (and 3.5 inches tall). I eyeball this. I like that I can move the crop box around on my photo to find my favorite crop. Don't worry that you are removing some of the photo and remember that some photos will lend themselves better to this vertical crop than others – keep that in mind as you are selecting which photos go where in your album.
5. Go to Image/Resize/Canvas Size and change the size to 5 inches x 7 inches. This will become your new canvas. On here you can fit 4, 2.5 inch x 3.5 inch photos. I decided to go about it this way when I saw that I would need to order 2 wallets (I don't need doubles of all these shots.

Here's a look at a couple of those 5 inch x 7 inch canvases:

  


I love these 2.5 inch x 3.5 inch photos. They really do round out the album in terms of filling out the rest of each of the days. Again, think pieces of the whole.

PRINTING COST

One of the questions I am often asked is related to printing at home vs. uploading to a developer.

After uploading my completed photo pages to Scrapbookpictures.com the total cost was $30.85 (including $3.99 for the shipping option I selected). This cost included the following:

• 9, 8×10's (I added one additional photo that I want to frame)
• 18, 5×7's (photos for the baseball card page protectors – 4 to a page for a total of 72 images after trimming)
• 7, 8.5×11 (the collage pages)

I know that is significantly less expensive than purchasing new ink cartridges for my printer. I'm looking forward to seeing how the pages all turn out and hoping that the sizing is all correct. I'll give you an update on that in a couple of days.

In the meantime, while I wait for my photos to come home, I'll be putting other pieces of the album together. Tomorrow's post will cover that process.

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