Fantastic Family Photo Books

The process of creating photo books used to be difficult.  However, thanks to the computer age, creating digital photo books is extremely easy.  All you have to do is sit down at your computer, use some simple software to choose a layout for your book, and then print off copies yourself or have them professionally printed.  Here are 5 fantastic family photo books that you can try.

Books of Fun and Games: 

Another fun project, which you can get your kids to help you with, is creating a digital photo book of fun and games.  Take pictures of your kids at their most creative points, whether that is building a tower out of blocks, painting a picture, playing in the yard, or anything else that they find fun.  Then, turn those creative photos into pages in a photo book.  You can add dates and captions to each picture.  That way, when your kids are grown up, they can look back fondly on all of the fun times they had when they were younger.

Guess the Object Books:

Are you looking for a fun project to give your kids on a rainy day?  Well, just make a couple of guess the object photo books ahead of time.  Then you can pull them out whenever the kids need something to do.  To make such a book all you need to do is take a few close up shots of things around your house.  Make one page of the book a picture and the next page a caption saying what the picture is, or make all the pages pictures and just tell your kids the right answers when they guess.

Quick Tips for Making Digital Photo Books

If you are interested in preserving family memories, there is no better way to do that than with a digital photo book.  In the old days, you used to have to keep photographs in boxes or take the time to arrange them in scrapbooks and albums, but today you can do all the organization in a fraction of the time on your computer.  Here are some quick tips for making digital photo books.

Preserve Your Favorite Memories:

Start by creating photo books using older family pictures.  You can scan them right into your computer.  Then simply use the software provided by the print company to organize the photos on each page.  A few quick menu selections can allow you to create custom borders and backgrounds for each image.  You can also add names, dates, and captions to the images.  So, your descendants for years to come will each know where the picture was taken, when it was taken, and who was in it.

Preserving your favorite memories in such a way is good for many reasons.  First, it can save space.  Since all the images will be computerized, you won't need to keep boxes and bags of loose photographs all over your house.  Second, it can preserve the images themselves and protect them from water, fire, and general wear.  Third, it can keep them organized and available to all members of your family to be printed out as each person needs or wants them.  You can even pull various images to create new digital photo books for certain special occasions, such as birthdays or anniversaries.

5 Creative Photo Book Ideas

If you want to make fun digital photo books, you aren't alone.  Digital photo books are a major trend these days.  Not only does storing your pictures on the computer preserve them, but it also makes it easy to organize all of your photos into unique and fun digital photo books that you and your family members can enjoy.  In fact, most professional photo book printing services will provide software that makes the process of creating a digital photo book extremely easy.  All you have to do is decide on a theme for your book and then follow the simple instructions to make your vision come to life.

Unfortunately, it's not always easy to choose a photo book theme, especially if you have thousands of family photographs to pick from.  However, there's no need to get overwhelmed.  Here are 5 creative photo book ideas to help you decide.

Kids Books:

If there are kids in your family, you can use digital photo books to create books that are specifically designed to keep them entertained, and even to help them learn.  For example, you could create a book that tells a story about something that happened in your family using photographs.  You could also take photographs of different objects to use in a counting book, alphabet book, or book to teach kids about colors, shapes, or any other themes that you can come up with.  The possibilities are practically endless.

Photo books make excellent keepsakes.  You can design them around all sorts of interesting themes.  You can even make photo books that remind friends or family members of certain events, such as trips or birthdays.  Here are 5 fun and fabulous photo books to get you started.

Recipe Books:

One of the most useful photo book ideas is the recipe book.  Instead of keeping disorganized books of recipes, or small cards that can easily get damaged or lost, why not combine your favorite recipes in a photo book format?  That way you can also include pictures of you and your family making or eating them.  You can even get your kids and other family members to help you create the book.  Then you can have copies printed for friends and family members as well.

A variation of that idea is that you could have family members and friends across the country or the globe e-mail you pictures of themselves, along with their favorite recipes.  The result will be a cookbook containing recipes from around the country, or around the world.  You can refer to it whenever you want to try a new and interesting recipe, or be reminded of a favorite relative or friend.

Pet Books:

Pet books are also fun photo books.  You can include pictures of your pets playing, or of various family members with your pets.  A pet photo book can be a good way to remember a pet once they are gone.  You could even make a photo book containing pictures of every pet that your family has ever had.  Your family members will love looking through the pages and remembering all the good times with their fluffy (or scaly) friends.

Baby Thank You Cards for Multiples

When you find out you are expecting multiples, you may be temporarily overwhelmed. However, as time passes, you will be more than ready to welcome two, three, or even four, new babies into your home. Friends and family will likely be just as excited about your multiple arrival, and will shower you with baby essentials and other fun gifts as well. One of the best ways to thank your friends and family is to send them a personalized thank you card featuring none other than your adorable new family. 

Ordering Baby Thank You Cards for Multiples From Us

We make it easy to order high-quality, personalized thank you cards right from the comfort of your own  home. With a variety of thank you cards to choose from, we will make it easy for you to create a truly unique and memorable card. We even prefold the cards for you, and send you matching envelopes too. Whether you have all girl multiples, boy multiples, or a combination of the two, we have colors and themes that will match the occasion perfectly. To ensure that your thank you cards are truly personal, the inside of every card is blank, which makes it perfect for your own handwritten message.

Themes for Baby Thank You Cards for Multiples 

Thank You Baby Cards for Girls

When you announce you are expecting a baby girl, your friends and family will likely inundate you with many gifts made especially for your little princess. While you likely have a great deal going on, just putting the baby gifts away is a task in its own, proper etiquette says you should send a handwritten thank you note to the well-wishers who gifted you and your baby girl. To make sending thank you cards for girls easy, we offer a variety of custom thank you cards. Better yet, our template choices offer gorgeous girly choices.

Girly Baby Girl Thank You Cards 

Our extensive baby thank you card inventory allows you to customize your baby thank you cards. In fact, you can add a picture of your newborn daughter, and add all her birth stats including name, date of birth, time of birth, length and weight. While the top of the card says thanks, the vital information and picture also allow you to use the card as a birth announcement as well. The inside of the thank you cards are blank, so you can add a truly personal message on the inside.

Baby Girl Thank You Card Themes

Baby Thank You Cards for Boys

Everyone knows that baby boys are made of frogs, snail, and puppy dog tails, but they also bring a great deal of joy to their mothers, fathers, extended family, and future friends too. At your baby shower, and for several weeks after your baby's arrival, you and your baby boy will be gifted with a variety of baby gifts. What better way to thank those that thought of you and your bundle of joy than to create a customized thank you card featuring a picture of the new man in your life. Keep reading below to find out how we can help you create the perfect baby thank you cards for boys. 

Soft, Yet Masculine, Baby Cards

We make it easy to upload a picture of your adorable little guy to feature on your thank you card. To ensure your baby boys' masculinity shows through, we have a variety of baby boy themes to choose from including light blue, dark blue, yellow, green, and even red backgrounds. To enhance the thank you cards many of our baby thank you cards for boys are available with images of bubbles, cuddly baby animals, blue booties, trees, blocks, birds, and many more. 

What to Expect When Ordering Baby Thank You Cards for Boys from Us

Like me, do you sometimes find it difficult to add text to your pages that involves more than a caption or simple title?  Sometimes it is easy to come up with more details to add to our pages, and writing the text that accompanies photos just seems to flow.  But if you find you need a bit of extra inspiration, one solution is to structure a photobook around questions and answers from an important person in your life--or else interview all of your family members for a variation on this theme.   Use this interview format as a way to structure books celebrating a colleague’s retirement, a grandparent’s legacy, a special anniversary, or a new graduate’s celebration of his or her childhood or teen years and journey through school.

Here are a few variations:

Make Yourself the Star of the Book Through Journaling 

Start by selecting your photos and getting the main layout done in your photobook.  Add a few titles to your pages, and then for each page, come up with ten or fifteen questions you would ask someone about the photos.  Imagine you are a stranger and have never seen the images before.  Ask about the people involved, the places, and the memories. 

Instead of keeping things more formal by using a question and answer interview format on your pages (which is also possible!), use the questions only as your starting point and journal the rest.  You don’t even need to include the questions in the book—treat them as a source for your material.  I sometimes work with pen and paper away from the computer and brainstorm ideas, then bring my notes back to the computer when I am ready to journal and complete my pages.

The Star of the Book:  Question and Answer Interview

Here are a bunch of tips for to help you integrate your historical and older family photos with photos you’ve taken recently.

Scan the originals!  Scan those photos from the 70’s and early 80’s with their signature rounded corners.  Scan Polaroids with their easily recognizable white borders to give a page that perfect informal snapshot feel from a few decades ago.

Match your colours—use a background colour palette to match your decade—bright colours or bold patterns for the 1980’s; muted colours for the 1920’s—1940’s; some of the light greens, blues and muted reds from the 50’s.  

Use colour palettes that go well with black and white or sepia photos.  Check with relatives or remember back to the colours of clothing, wallpaper and paint, furniture, appliances and accessories from the decade you are working with.

I also like to scan maps and covers of heritage albums with their dog-eared pages and worn surfaces.  Save these in a compatible format and use them as elements on your page.  Scanning is also great for including entire mounted or cover displays from old family albums or cardboard-mounted heritage photos.  No need to take things apart to include these in your photobook.  You can also save your file then crop and re-save copies of the file in order to use details from within the larger image.  I have used this to make a family tree from a heritage photo featuring several generations of family members—be sure to save an original copy of your file before you begin working on the details pulled from the image, though!

Ideas for Taking Amazing Photographs of Kids!

If you love the idea of making a set of themed pages of your little one, then create an on-the-spot photo shoot wherever you happen to be.  Grab a few colourful or distinct pieces of clothing, objects or accessories, and get going!

Three Tips for Choosing Fun Accessories and Props

1.  Choose a special piece of clothing, a showy hat, a doll or toy, or even simply a few flowers or other natural materials that your infant or young child can hold, wear, on interact with.  Hats don’t need to stay on the young one’s head, either—capture your young one in action twirling it in their hands or throwing it in the air—or putting it on the family pet!  The great thing about a simple accessory is that it will be in a series of photos and that translates really well onto the facing pages of a photobook where you need something to unify both pages.

2.  Let your child interact:  bring along a pet or go to a place like a petting zoo or beach that has tame or domestic animals your child can play with or run around after.  If you have a playground nearby, go out on a clear and slightly overcast day to take advantage of the even and indirect light.  Umbrellas, sunglasses and simple take-alongs like buckets, sidewalk chalk or soap for blowing bubbles can make great inexpensive additions.  For babies and  younger infants, indoors can be just as rich a place to explore. Set your toddler up on a colourful play mat or explore the nursery or the kitchen!

Working in digital scrapbooking, we work in two-page spreads like graphic designers do when creating layouts for catalogue and fashion magazines.  Get some inspiration for the creative use of text from the catalogues that you get for free or from magazines you subscribe to.  Here are a few of my favourite tips:

Play Around With Text Placement

Sometimes simple is best:  a few words centered above or below the photo or aligned to the right or left edge of your main photograph.  Remember that you don’t need to keep your page layout centred—play around with keeping things to the far right or left of the page, and leave some open space in the middle or down one side.

Fonts

If you have an extremely large number of photos or ideas to fit into your album, remember that you can change the formatting of some previous pages.  Some of us tend to feel that once a page is complete it should be left that way—if you look again, you may find that a page with two photos laid out diagonally across the page may have room for two more photos as well.  If you have dozens of photos left unused and you have finished your photo book, you might also want to consider transforming a page or two into a collage layout.

I have seen beautiful pages created by a friend who used a collage of family photos for the last three or four pages of her 12” x 12” digital album.  She captured moments from the lives of her grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and all the grandchildren, to celebrate her grandparents’ anniversary and the legacy and memories they had passed on through their family through the years.  Just remember to place the most important photos where they will be noticed—or leave these special photos for other pages in the album, where they will be the centre of attention, since our eyes tend to jump from here to there when faced with a collage of images.

Sometimes collage brings to mind a random assortment of things that do not go together.  There is nothing wrong with including a few pages like this in your current project, although I usually like to balance an album with a few more structured pages nearby this kind of layout.  In its loosest form, a 2-page collage spread could include any of your favourite photographs taken from a variety of sources—heritage family photos, baby pictures of yourself or loved ones, school photos, formal shots from weddings or proms—even photos from photo booths or any old Polaroids you can find and scan.  Include a title that ties the page together, or make one photograph the central image which will become the main focus for the page.

Another fun way to incorporate collage into a family album is to do a collage page or two for each member of your family.  Include favourite places, people, school photos, family photos, photos from special trips or vacations, and anything else you can think of that is meaningful or fun for that person.  Extend this activity and spend a few hours in your home or neighbourhood searching for images to add to each person’s collection of favourite things!

What is a digital crop?

Working with software to create albums and other projects doesn’t necessarily mean that the fun social aspect of scrapbooking is gone.

A crop is any event where album-makers gather to work and share ideas.  Crops can also be hybrid—a few at the table working on traditional albums, and others working on laptops or a home computer.   A digital crop is a gathering of people working with their software either individually or in small groups—it is a chance to get together, create, and share ideas.  A digital crop could be held in a living room, a basement, a dining room, the lunch room at a school or workplace or at a community centre.  If participants are equipped with laptops, everyone works individually with a break for snacks, a meal, conversation, and maybe a demonstration or two from anyone who wants to share a technique or album concept.  Check that internet access is up and running (and accessible to guests) before inviting everyone over.  Ask collaborators or friends who’ll be attending to bring their photos in digital format already—on a memory card, USB key and so on—and ask that they pick a theme so they come to the crop ready to work instead of needing to scan photos or choose from hundreds or even thousands of images for the ones perfect for the project.

Tips For Those With a Small Budget and No Time to Spare!

The simplest and quickest book can be an album featuring one or two photos per page and including a minimum amount of text.  If you have more time or want to create an even more personalized digital album, have fun with embellishing your pages, playing with the layout, expanding your album by adding pages, and adding extra text to the pages you have made.  If you want a quick and inexpensive project then the smallest format of softcover photo books is for you.

If you are working with a small budget, choose a softcover album and keep the number of pages to a minimum—usually a photo book will come with a certain number of pages already formatted and ready to use.  Simply choose a theme you like for your pages, slide in your photos, and add some titles and text.  If you want a more durable gift—something you imagine the recipient will keep with him or her for many years—then a hardcover book is a better option.  I usually use smaller soft cover albums as gifts for my children to celebrate informal events—a dance recital, for example, or a party or special weekend away with friends.  When I am working on a more important present then I almost always use hardcover, since it will stand the test of time as it is flipped through and enjoyed by the recipient or the family again and again over the years.

Whether it is a first birthday or a fifty year anniversary, photo books are a great way to collect stories and memories together in a format that lends itself perfectly to gift-giving.  Two benefits of using a photo book to make a gift are that you can work on the project alone or as a small group, and you can choose the size of the book and the number of pages to use.  Sometimes the project expands as we start working on it — a book for a grandparent or an aunt or uncle may turn into a full-scale heritage album project, for example.  Some people are not aware that you can also add pages to your project — check the maximum number of pages the software allows, and expand your project as you like.

I have used hardcover books for family heritage albums I have sent to siblings during the holidays, as well as for a gift to my spouse celebrating a special vacation.  I have seen friends use the largest format of hardcover album for presents celebrating their parents’ anniversaries and also as very special birthday presents for a child — even if that child has since grown up and the book has become a celebration of his or her life!  A book like this created for a child is made even more special if photos are included from previous years, from the time he or she was a newborn to his or her current age.  And of course all of the gifts can be personalized with messages from a loved one or from several important people in the recipient’s life.  Adding the stories to your pages is one of the most important ways of capturing memories and celebrating the person you are making the album for!  If you are making a photo book into a gift, don’t be shy about asking for help from others who know the person the album is intended for.  You can ask for help with gathering photos, identifying who is in older photographs, and identifying where certain photos were taken.  You can also sit down with a relative or friend and create the album together.  It is an enjoyable activity and helps gain momentum for completing the project at the same time!

One of the best things about working with digital albums is that you can invest your time creating one book using the software and you can then order as many copies of the album as you would like.  This makes it the perfect project to celebrate a wedding—whether it is an engagement book celebrating a couple’s lives together, an album capturing the wedding day itself, or a set of identical albums that can be given as a keepsake and thank-you gift to people in the wedding party.

Digital albums are also very well suited to collaborative projects—a big improvement over the days when everyone was using printed photographs and making copies meant digging up negatives or searching for duplicates. If you decide to make a gift for the bride-to-be for her wedding shower—or for the bride and groom as an engagement or wedding present--send out  a message letting friends and family members know you are looking for photographs to use in an album you will be giving as a gift.  Ask everyone to send in a few of their favourite photos—make sure you ask for a specific number or set a limit for the maximum number of photos you would like to receive if  you don’t want to be overloaded with images.   If you can, ask the fiancé or a parent or sibling to be in on the project, since they may be able to find some great candid photos.   If you are keeping things secret, make sure you send any email messages to an account only read by only the intended recipient—some couples share an email account, even if it is only in one person’s name!

If you are part of a circle of friends or close family members, consider asking each person to help you make a page.   Or else set aside a date to get together as a group to work on the project.  Ask that everyone sends you images first (and make sure to store them all in the same place on the computer, or put them all on a USB key or disk so you don’t have to waste time trying to find attachments or to remember where you stored the files everyone has sent!).  If those participating are short on time or can’t make it in person to help create the album, then ask that each person send in one or two stories or a message they would like to pass along to the couple or to the bride-to-be.  Type out these messages in the text boxes on the page in your digital photo book, and include a picture of the friend or family member with each message.

Many people are beginning to see the value of celebrating their family history through the creation of digital albums.  These special heritage or historical photo books can pass along the stories as well as the photographs to the generations to come.

A family heritage album does often take more time to make than some of the quick family albums many of us are making these days.  You will want to spend a bit of time sorting the photographs, choosing the ones that best represent the stories you know or would like to tell about your family’s history, and then scanning and organizing the photos for the album.

On the other hand, you can also keep things simple and choose to limit the scope of your project so you can complete it more quickly.  Instead of narrating the story of your entire family on your mother’s side, for example, begin with one album highlighting your mother’s life.  This way, you can include any photos from her childhood that you would like without feeling the need to find out or write down the entire story and genealogy that goes with them.

Another tip is to ask for help identifying and sorting your photos.  Sometimes items like albums, negatives, and framed photos are passed down to certain members of the family.  Check with any siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins to see who has inherited heritage photographs from parents and grandparents.  If you do not live too far away, ask to accompany your family member to your local copy shop where you can have the items scanned.  Setting a date for doing this is often better than asking your relative to do the leg work for you—like most of us, tackling the pile of black and white photos is often put off for another day!  Don’t forget to make copies of the scanned items--have prints made for other members of your family, if your budget allows.   If you have a scanner at home and the items to be scanned are not too large, then by all means scan the photos yourself.  If this becomes too time consuming, look up a store in your area that specializes in photo restoration or digitalizing images.   I have found, though, that even a local copy shop should have a scanner that can scan several photographs at once at a fairly reasonable price.  I like that I can then ask for a CD or DVD with all of the images already stored in one place.  I find this to be much easier than scanning each photo by hand.

Once you have completed the album, ask around to see if a grandparent or other relative might want to help with the cost of printing the albums.  One of my friends showed her albums to her father, and he decided to purchase and send copies to all of the grandchildren as a Christmas gift.  Otherwise, consider using this project as a gift to send to siblings, children or nieces and nephews.  It is wonderful to know that the photographs and stories will be passed down from this generation to the next.

What is a digital crop?

As I mentioned in a previous post, working with software to create albums and other projects doesn’t necessarily mean that the fun social aspect of scrapbooking is gone.

A crop is any event where album-makers gather to work and share ideas.  Crops can also be hybrid—a few at the table working on traditional albums, and others working on laptops or a home computer.   A digital crop is a gathering of people working with their software either individually or in small groups—it is a chance to get together, create, and share ideas.  A digital crop could be held in a living room, a basement, a dining room, the lunch room at a school or workplace or at a community centre.  If participants are equipped with laptops, everyone works individually with a break for snacks, a meal, conversation, and maybe a demonstration or two from anyone who wants to share a technique or album concept.  Check that internet access is up and running (and accessible to guests) before inviting everyone over.  Ask collaborators or friends who’ll be attending to bring their photos in digital format already—on a memory card, USB key and so on—and ask that they pick a theme so they come to the crop ready to work instead of needing to scan photos or choose from hundreds or even thousands of images for the ones perfect for the project.

Why attend a digital crop?

Very simply—for the same reason craftspeople, artists and other creative types have always met up to share ideas and look over each others’ work.  I think of crops as modern versions of the old-fashioned quilting bee, where friends and family members met up for an afternoon or evening of quilting.  At a digital crop you can expect to share ideas, get help with a project, learn a few shortcuts or new features of the photo book software, and enjoy conversation and maybe refreshments if someone’s thought to organize some ahead of time!

I wish I had left all of my sorting of old photos behind when I started with digital scrapbooking, but the reality is that I still have many old photographs I’d like to use in my current projects.  Here is how I might set out my boxes or bins when facing my remaining box of unsorted family and heritage prints:

1.  Current personal photos—the last five or ten years—or even the last six months to a year, if you are a prolific photographer.  Although I’m often tempted to leave sorting behind and start in on the larger heritage and family projects I have planned, I try to work backwards, completing albums using the most recent photos first.  These prints are often the easiest to find, remember details about, and journal in the photo book.  There is still some calling out to my spouse about when we did what, but there are less “I have no idea who this is” or “Did we ever even go there?” comments as we sort.

2.  One pile each for old family photos from each side of the family.  Use a photo-labelling pencil to number photos you have questions about or which feature “mystery” people or settings.  Jot the questions down in a notebook as you go.  This makes a good starting point if and when you are able to track down a family friend or family member to help identify and order the photographs chronologically.

3.  One box for the next project you want to undertake.  Really—only the next one—the one you’ll be starting on as soon as you can turn your back on sorting all these prints!  Limit yourself to one or two of these project boxes since otherwise (if you’re anything like me) you may get distracted by all the possibilities and your sorting session may meander its way into an hour or two of choosing photos for a number of projects you’d one day like to undertake.  Limiting yourself this way also means these photos are top priority to be scanned.  Even if you have to halt your sorting part-way through and put things back (so that a coffee table or part of a room can be used again, for example!) you will have this one pile on hand and no excuses not to get the photos for one specific project scanned so you can start a new photo book project right away.

Because...

1.  it displays important photographs and tells the stories that go with them.

2.  the informal, everyday moments in our lives are important.

3.  it can be as simple or as jam-packed with photos and writing as you like.

4.  it can be about a house, a person, a celebration, a place, a pet, a lifetime, shared histories, or a dream.

5.  it can chart an hour, a day, a month or decades of our lives.

6.  it says “these memories are worth keeping and talking about”.

7.  it includes photographs, words, memories, thoughts, images and quotes about favourite things.

8.  you choose the size and format.