Summer Layered Template Album No. 9 is now available and is the last double page spread in the Summer Project 2010 series.
This one is entitled *Summer Random* with the intention of providing a catch-all, for all remaining odd photos. These are photos for which there is no specific story, or the story is not big enough to warrant its own page. These photos are limited to one or two isolated shots. I like to gather all these random photos into a double page to create a collage of snapshots. The individual stories may not be big, significant or even exciting, but collectively they can provide enormous impact.
Most of my recent albums have a spread like this. I call it a home for all those photos that don't fit anywhere else in my albums. It's also a really great way to keep my albums from expanding into too many pages and it cuts down the creation time too.
[supplies]
This particular page is all photos much like my pages for my Our Friends and Summer Eats pages. All photos with supplemental words to fill in the details.
I like the details. While a 20 photos can certainly tell the who, the where and the what of a story, they cannot portray the thoughts, the feelings and what was said during any given event. I nearly always add a few sentences, if not a paragraph or two, to document those aspects of the story that go beyond the photos.
A few ideas for documenting beyond photos:
- Write about what you felt in terms of your emotions.
- Use your basic senses such as what your saw or heard.
- Document conversations or what was said.
- Record the highlight of an event or what you remember most.
- Think about why you are creating this page and what you want to remember in the future
- Make connections with the people or places in the photos and write about the significance of those relationships.
In this particular spread, I have provided the writing in list format, jotting down the significance of each photo. My key points are separated by double colons to keep the journaling in paragraph format. This mimics the narrative writing in my other album pages and also makes better use of the journaling space I have available.
Journaling reads:
Temporary residents, a family of red robins being raised on our porch :: pre-deployment baseball intro in the backyard :: a blooming garden :: Daddy coming home from training for 3 weeks and leaving again :: family photo shoot :: Ella loving being to sleep in late :: Ella celebrates year 8 with a backyard party with friends :: family conversations via Skype :: Play Mobil turns the play room into a disaster zone for the majority of the summer :: new Shape Ups by Sketchers helps heal back pain :: more time spent with the cousins who now live just 10 minutes away :: raising a tadpole to gray tree frog :: Costco shopping sits in the hallway for days before being put away :: Ella earns her Kid Kicker purple belt :: bunnies galore in our backyard :: Luke spends the majority of the Summer sleeping under his bed :: roasting marshmallows on the stove because it’s too windy to light the fire pit outside:: getting ready for a new school opening :: labeling school supplies. June-August 2010
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I have also released a Summer Layered Template Album BONUS Pack designed to co-ordinate with the current templates in the series. This collection includes 10-12X12 Single templates that can be substituted for any of the existing templates in the series to create new templates.
I wanted to introduce the option of taking the album beyond 20 pages and also provide some options for those of you who have fewer photos or just prefer the look of larger photos. Mix and match to create unlimited variations to suit your needs.
This page was created using the first page of Summer Layered Template Album No. 2 with page 5 from the Summer Layered Template Album BONUS Pack.[supplies]
This is how I created this custom template:
Create a 24 X 12 inch new layout (File> New). Open the first page of Summer Layered Template Album No. 2 and duplicate it (Image>Duplicate) before changing the orientation of the template by flipping the entire template vertically (Image> Image Rotation> Flip Canvas Vertical). Select all the layers by clicking on the first layer in the Layers palette, holding down the SHIFT key, and clicking on the last layer. Drag these selected layers onto the new layout and position them on the left side of canvas using the Move tool from the Tools palette.
The text is now unreadable as a result of the flipping process. Select the title and text box layers in the Layers palette, and go to Edit> Transform> Flip Vertical, to flip the text back to it's original position.
Open a BONUS Pack template and repeat the layer selection. Move the layers to the new left side of the new layout. Notice that the thinner part of the white frame overlay is on the outer edge of the page when it should be where the pages meet.
Reselect the layers for the right hand side of the spread and flip the layers horizontally. Edit> Transform> Flip Horizontal. Change the title as desired.
And voila! You have just created a unique double page spread for your album.
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Next week, I'll be giving you some idea's on how to wrap up your album with Summer Layered Template Album No. 10 which provides the first and last pages to the album.
