Photographic Albums

Photographic Albums

What do you do with all the photos you have taken. There are many options for Photographic Albums to consider. Here are some of them with some hints on how to make them easily.

This blog is taken from an expert that does a family album every year!! To view the complete article with photos go to:

http://www.lilblueboo.com/

One of the most gratifying things for me is finishing up a yearly album.  I’m always usually about a year behind but that time allows me to make sure every photo is printed and organized.  I always seem to have random photos show up mid-year and it would drive me nuts if those weren’t in the yearly album.  I talk about the photos as I go and tell stories:

After I did my How to Organize and Print YEARS worth of Photos tutorial I had numerous requests for a post on how I actually assemble my albums…..so I took photos as I finished 2010’s album up this weekend.  I always find that if you have YEARS worth of albums to make start with the most recent year you are ready to work on and move backwards. A few thoughts about album making before I start with the tips:

1. Photos and albums are items you should splurge on.  I would rather use money for photos and album supplies than buy a new handbag or outfit.  These are your memories!
2. Album making should be easy. I use a simple system and don’t overcomplicate it.  Hand write labels….your family will appreciate your handwriting years down the road.
3. I love making huge family albums for our family but I make digital “yearly highlights” albums to share with family members because they can be printed in multiple copies.
4. Leave your albums out in the open so that they can be enjoyed! (and grabbed quickly in the event of an emergency!)

The first thing I do when I’m ready to make an album is make sure that I have every single photo and memento ready to go and organized.

I always pick generic supplies so that they can be purchased from multiple companies….this way if one company goes out of business I have other options. I also like have a LOT of photos and the more generic the supplies, the more reasonable the price.

For my basic supplies, I always use expandable 12?x12? post albums.  Since my local scrapbooking store went out of business I started buying them in bulk from Amazon. These are Making Memories albums and they can expand to be about 3 inches wide. I usually pick classic brown leather albums:

I always stock up on 12?x12? page inserts.  I like the ones from Aaron Brothersbecause they have a good weight to them and they are about half the price that I’ve seen anywhere else.  You can buy them by the box if you ask them to special order for you. They might even be able to do a special order over the phone….not sure though.

I have a paper cutter to trim photos easily and I buy tape runners by the dozen! I use acid free black pens for adding captions to photos:
I use 4?x6? photo sleeves to display photos that are almost identical…..like family photo shoots.
I store my supplies in drawers near my workspace so that I always know where they are and what I need to reorder:When the albums are yearly I know that I can pull out any one album and the beginning will be January and the end will be December. I can’t bear to throw away our family and friends’ Christmas cards so the last few pages of every album are a collection of those……it’s really fun to look at how they’ve changed over the years:
I always work through each album one month at a time.  I break the month’s photos down into separate piles in order and figure out which ones will go into the album.  This is when that organization tutorial I did comes in handy….because all of the big events are listed out already in chronological order with the dates. Any photos I don’t use just go back in the cardstock envelopes.

I like to make one large family album with every photo taken that year.  I think it’s important to catalog our family memories in that way: no fancy scrapbooking, no fancy embellishments….just hundreds of photos to enjoy and document our life together.  So that I can share photos with other family members I create yearly digital books and print multiple copies.  They are expensive but the money is worth it!

Here is another link about organizing. This is a must.

How to Organize and Print YEARS worth of Photos tutorial