With all the photos we take in a year, you'll love seeing them all together in a year-end album that chronicles the past 365 days of special milestones and everyday moments. Family and friends will enjoy reviewing the pages and reliving the. While your list of other Heritage Makers projects may vary from year to year, promise yourself you'll find a yearbook style you love and commit to publish one each and every January. It will quickly become one of your most treasured keepsakes.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Year-End Albums
If you want to read the best book on family albums, download the Kelly Wolfer template “Ultimate Family Yearbook.” This 12 x 12 storybook template, number 77508, is a complete yearbook template that also includes every tip and hint about making a yearbook or modifying one that you could ever imagine. These instructions can be found on the last pages of the storybook's template so you can refer to them while creating, then delete them prior to publishing.
As shown above, this template showcases plenty of photos as well as journaling blocks in a clean and simple style. This allows the reader to focus on the photos themselves, instead of distracting design elements that may cause a cluttered look. You’ll appreciate the information on the edge of the pages that gives you the numeric location of each photo block so that should you want to increase the size by replacing three photos for one, you’ll know at what coordinates to replace the photo.
Organization Tips & Tricks
As Kelly’s book points out, the key to an easy yearbook process is organizing your photos. This is best started on your computer, not in Studio. First, create a "2011 Yearbook" folder on your computer and fill it with 10-15 photos per month from your images on your hard drive, flash drives, camera memory cards or CD/DVDs.
Once those are loaded, your project will be a breeze. Everything is already organized for you. No matter which yearbook template you choose, it's unlikely you'll need more than 12-15 photos per month. If you have more than that for a special occasion like a holiday or birthday, for example, you can simply duplicate a spread and use it for an extra "month." If you don't have as many photos as the layout shows in a month, simply modify the photo spaces to be larger versions, delete some of them and add more copy blocks, or swap them with coordinating papers or fill the spaces with embellishments or quotes if you wish.
Family Album in Basic
If you or someone you know does not have a Premier account separately or free with a Club HM membership, they can still create yearbooks too with a free Basic account. “Our 2011 Family Year Book” by Lynda Angelastro is a 12 x 12 storybook, template 77502 and has the same clean style as Kelly’s Premier template.
You may also opt to do individual scrap pages for your yearbook instead. While these are not on sale this month like the 12 x 12 storybooks are, you can design a year's worth using "Our Year in Pages," template 77507.
A Photo a Day
You may have heard of this "Project 365" idea of taking a photo a day for a year. It's an incredible undertaking and a brilliant way to capture your year in a unique way. If you were one of the dedicated photographers who took a photo every day in 2010 or 2011 or you’d like to set that goal for 2012, “Project 365” by Darcie Toom is the right 12 x 12 storybook for you. Template 36226, Darcie’s book is arranged to allow you to document a photo a day. Variations in the month of February from year to year are easily managed by copying a new set of pages from a larger month and removing a space or two.
12 Photos a Month
If you don’t usually have your camera out every day, Tanja Rigby has made scrap pages for every month of the year that require just 12 photos a month. “Year with You - Jan thru Dec” by Tanja Rigby, 12 x 12 scrap pages inside template 77329 is perfect if you'd rather keep up month-to-month instead of only publishing once in December or January. While all the pages are in one template, download it, do the months you want, delete the rest of the pages, publish and do the same thing next month. You COULD wait and publish them all at the end of the year, but why not let your family enjoy your pages every month?
The Weekly Way
However you decide to approach year-booking, it takes so little effort if you do it on a regular basis. That could be once a day, once a week, once a month or even once a year, but don’t let yourself get a year or two behind or you’ll never get those priceless memories in print. Designed with a single page for each week of the year, Michelle Bell's 11.5 x 8.5 storybook called "Family Yearbook: 52 Weeks" template 61136 is ideal for year-booking the weekly way. Michelle makes sure she updates it every Sunday evening so she stays on top of it and has very little left to finish during the busy holiday season, and she can publish right after the New Year.
Pages can easily be traded using “manage pages” so that a week has more or less photo spots, depending on the week. Headings are plain text and so the week number can be changed in an instant.
Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013
What better New Year’s resolution could you make than to preserve your family’s memories of 2012? With our wide variety of templates and organizational tips and tricks, it’s a project that offers so many rewards for comparatively little effort!
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Year-End Albums
If you want to read the best book on family albums, download the Kelly Wolfer template “Ultimate Family Yearbook.” This 12 x 12 storybook template, number 77508, is a complete yearbook template that also includes every tip and hint about making a yearbook or modifying one that you could ever imagine. These instructions can be found on the last pages of the storybook's template so you can refer to them while creating, then delete them prior to publishing.
As shown above, this template showcases plenty of photos as well as journaling blocks in a clean and simple style. This allows the reader to focus on the photos themselves, instead of distracting design elements that may cause a cluttered look. You’ll appreciate the information on the edge of the pages that gives you the numeric location of each photo block so that should you want to increase the size by replacing three photos for one, you’ll know at what coordinates to replace the photo.
Organization Tips & Tricks
As Kelly’s book points out, the key to an easy yearbook process is organizing your photos. This is best started on your computer, not in Studio. First, create a "2011 Yearbook" folder on your computer and fill it with 10-15 photos per month from your images on your hard drive, flash drives, camera memory cards or CD/DVDs.
After you've selected several options that best tell the story for each month, you're ready to upload these into Studio. Create a new folder named "2011 Yearbook" with new "albums" for each month. Note the numerical naming structure, which helps them stay in chronological order in the folder. See an example with this 2010 version shown below.
Once those are loaded, your project will be a breeze. Everything is already organized for you. No matter which yearbook template you choose, it's unlikely you'll need more than 12-15 photos per month. If you have more than that for a special occasion like a holiday or birthday, for example, you can simply duplicate a spread and use it for an extra "month." If you don't have as many photos as the layout shows in a month, simply modify the photo spaces to be larger versions, delete some of them and add more copy blocks, or swap them with coordinating papers or fill the spaces with embellishments or quotes if you wish.
Family Album in Basic
If you or someone you know does not have a Premier account separately or free with a Club HM membership, they can still create yearbooks too with a free Basic account. “Our 2011 Family Year Book” by Lynda Angelastro is a 12 x 12 storybook, template 77502 and has the same clean style as Kelly’s Premier template.
You may also opt to do individual scrap pages for your yearbook instead. While these are not on sale this month like the 12 x 12 storybooks are, you can design a year's worth using "Our Year in Pages," template 77507.
A Photo a Day
You may have heard of this "Project 365" idea of taking a photo a day for a year. It's an incredible undertaking and a brilliant way to capture your year in a unique way. If you were one of the dedicated photographers who took a photo every day in 2010 or 2011 or you’d like to set that goal for 2012, “Project 365” by Darcie Toom is the right 12 x 12 storybook for you. Template 36226, Darcie’s book is arranged to allow you to document a photo a day. Variations in the month of February from year to year are easily managed by copying a new set of pages from a larger month and removing a space or two.
For 2012, February's Leap Year will technically make it a Project 366 but it's simple to add an extra photo to make room for February 29th.
It's an organized design that not only showcases a photo per day, but also includes a small caption box to let you journal about each one, as well as a few more lines about the month as a whole.
12 Photos a Month
If you don’t usually have your camera out every day, Tanja Rigby has made scrap pages for every month of the year that require just 12 photos a month. “Year with You - Jan thru Dec” by Tanja Rigby, 12 x 12 scrap pages inside template 77329 is perfect if you'd rather keep up month-to-month instead of only publishing once in December or January. While all the pages are in one template, download it, do the months you want, delete the rest of the pages, publish and do the same thing next month. You COULD wait and publish them all at the end of the year, but why not let your family enjoy your pages every month?
The Weekly Way
However you decide to approach year-booking, it takes so little effort if you do it on a regular basis. That could be once a day, once a week, once a month or even once a year, but don’t let yourself get a year or two behind or you’ll never get those priceless memories in print. Designed with a single page for each week of the year, Michelle Bell's 11.5 x 8.5 storybook called "Family Yearbook: 52 Weeks" template 61136 is ideal for year-booking the weekly way. Michelle makes sure she updates it every Sunday evening so she stays on top of it and has very little left to finish during the busy holiday season, and she can publish right after the New Year.
Pages can easily be traded using “manage pages” so that a week has more or less photo spots, depending on the week. Headings are plain text and so the week number can be changed in an instant.
Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013
What better New Year’s resolution could you make than to preserve your family’s memories of 2012? With our wide variety of templates and organizational tips and tricks, it’s a project that offers so many rewards for comparatively little effort!
