DIY - Turning a Photo Calendar Into a Scrapbook

It may be obvious given my chosen occupation that I like photography. Let me re-phrase that, LOVE it. That being said, I tend to go a little crazy when it comes to all things related to photography, and that includes creating keepsakes for my family.

In this digital age especially, nearly everyone owns a digital camera - and because of its ease of use and the vast amounts of images you can store on a computer or memory chip - I think people are taking more photos than ever.

I, for example, took somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 photos of my family in 2011. Knowing that there was no way that I was going to take the time to print that many photos and then put them in albums (out of the first five years of my marriage, only one of them is in an album) I decided to create a calendar full of photos. I figured this way I would be forced to choose only the photos that I really liked and that were memorable.

After the first year, I didn't quite know what to do with the calendar, but it was too special to just put in a box. Then I had an epiphany - these pages of photos would make the perfect scrapbook!

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Because I have a Mac, it comes with iPhoto, a photo program that also allows the user to create calendars, photo books, etc. within the program. However, there are tons of websites out there where you can upload your photos and do the same thing. Two examples are Snapfish and MyPublisher.

Calendar Cover

Below are two examples of pages I created for the past two years. As you can imagine, there are a ton of different layouts and designs that you can use.

I tried to use photos that corresponded with that
particular month and/or season.

Sometimes, simplicity says it all. 

Here's some of the nitty gritty:

First, I cut each page from the binding. The photo portion of this calendar measured 10 x 13 inches, so in order to fit my pages into a scrapbook sleeve, I had to do some trimming (the standard scrapbook album uses 12 x 12 inch pages). Therefore, I had to take 1/2 inch off of both sides of the page to make it fit into the sleeve.

This is so simple, it's ridiculous. Lastly, I inserted the trimmed page into the plastic sleeve...

...and added some textured scrapbook paper to compliment the collage.  It can be this simplistic, or you can go to town and add the usual scrapbooking suspects like lettering, stickers and things of that nature. Honestly though, for those of us who lead busy lives, leaving it this way may be the only way it will get done!