I really admire the photobooks created by Australian digital scrapbooker (and Designer Digitals creative team member) Esther.
She recently finished an album of a trip to the Yarra Valley. I love the way she combined a multi-photo page with one full-page photo for each spread.
For this Yarra Valley album she used Taped Photo Clusters by Katie Pertiet, added and paper strips down the edge of the page. The cluster strip on the edge of my LOs to add color and interest and a favorite kraft tag holds the page sub-title. A brad or button usually adds dimension - and she says she never feels a page is finished until some brushwork is added behind the photos!
Once Esther decides on the basic design and style she uses that as the basis of all of the pages of the album, making it much quicker to create.
About Esther:
Tell me about your scrapbooking:
I developed a love of craft as a child in the '60s, photography as a teen in the '70s, and then computers once I went to university in the early '80s so I was destined to be a digital scrapper.
I grew up in a very small town with both my parents as science teachers. I went on to study science, married my husband and became a teacher. I now have three daughters who are studying at various universities in Melbourne, one studying Interior Design, one Accounting and the youngest has chosen... science :)
I am very glad that I had a passion for photography because I took many photos of the girls as they grew up. I still have all the negatives and have scanned them all - that was a huge project.
My first scrapbook pages were travel pages. I started as a paper scrapper. I quickly developed a preference for two page spreads. My early paper albums are SO heavy (not to mention costly).
Even as a digi scrapper I prefer two page spreads. I like pages that are either very similar to create a flow or quite different to make a contrast. The easiest way to make a contrast is to have a full page photo facing a collage of smaller ones, my albums seem to come together much more quickly that way.
Often it is the deciding on a theme that is the most time consuming. I'll search my gallery favorites for inspiration. I always settle on a theme that includes
* background paper
* fonts for the title and journaling (my favourite journaling font is joehand3)
* set of frames (or even better,a set of templates to make it super quick)
Why do you chose to scrap your photos (rather than use a "drag and drop" photobook printing service or just leaving them on your hard drive?)
I never leave my photos on my camera for long. I quickly upload them to my computer and rename them so I don't forget what they were about. I also use Lightroom to add the story of the photo to the metadata.
I have used a "drag and drop" photobook. That was the first photobook I had printed. Although I was able to finish it relatively quickly, I was frustrated by the limitations of the software. I like find control for photo placement and I love adding some color via some paper or brushwork to tie together all the photos on the page. It is so much fun to add in embellishments that work with the story and make the book so much more interesting.
I have divided my albums into four categories and I find that it helps me find a home for my photos and stories:
* 365 albums - photos of random details of my life or recording a special moment when there was just one photo. I keep them super simple so I can keep up to date easily.
* Travel albums - A4 albums such as my Yarra Valley one. I usually complete these fairly quickly - within 6 months of the trip.
* Family year albums - 12x12" double page spreads of family events. I have not yet finished a single one of these for printing!
* Little Adventures albums - these contain photos from photography outings, weekends away without the kids, and other special events not family related. They have a similar format to my travel albums.
Getting the stories recorded is so rewarding (I look back at my early photos where there is no story and it makes me a little sad). The friends I've made online make it so special. I enjoy my visit to the Designer Digitals gallery and forum each day.
I love digital scrapbooking and the richness it brings to my life :)
Where do you get your digital scrapbooking photobooks printed?
I have used many print services to print my digital scrapbooking photobooks - Australian ones such Momento, Albumworks, Photobook Australia and the international ones Blurb and Shutterfly.
I usually print with Albumworks because:
* They have A4 landscape books which I find perfect for my full page photos
* They have an "HD" paper which is slightly textured and gives the photos "zing"
* You download a standard easy-to-use software product to compose your album (the same one as used by many others such as Photobook Australia)
* You can drag photos directly from your folder on Windows onto your page
* You can right-click on photos on your page to see where they are in your folder (good for checking whether you want to replace it with the one before or after in your folder or add another photo to your page)
I shy away from Shutterfly because I don't like that I have to upload all my pages to their website first. It is a much slower workflow for me. I use Blurb a for all of 365 albums because they are the only one that allows up to 400 pages and they are very good value.
I try to make my photobook creation workflow as simple as possible. I always create my pages and save them in TIFF format with a filename that keeps them in order (eg the date or the page number). Then it is a simple matter to auto-import them into the photobook printing software when they are done. The albumworks software allows you to insert your layered tiff files which means I only have one copy of the file and if I make edits to my original TIFF the photobook updates automatically. Blurb requires jpg, so after all my proofreading I run a Photoshop batch process to convert my tiffs to jpg and then use Blurb's autofill to fill the pages.
She recently finished an album of a trip to the Yarra Valley. I love the way she combined a multi-photo page with one full-page photo for each spread.
For this Yarra Valley album she used Taped Photo Clusters by Katie Pertiet, added and paper strips down the edge of the page. The cluster strip on the edge of my LOs to add color and interest and a favorite kraft tag holds the page sub-title. A brad or button usually adds dimension - and she says she never feels a page is finished until some brushwork is added behind the photos!
Once Esther decides on the basic design and style she uses that as the basis of all of the pages of the album, making it much quicker to create.
About Esther:Tell me about your scrapbooking:
I developed a love of craft as a child in the '60s, photography as a teen in the '70s, and then computers once I went to university in the early '80s so I was destined to be a digital scrapper.
I grew up in a very small town with both my parents as science teachers. I went on to study science, married my husband and became a teacher. I now have three daughters who are studying at various universities in Melbourne, one studying Interior Design, one Accounting and the youngest has chosen... science :)
I am very glad that I had a passion for photography because I took many photos of the girls as they grew up. I still have all the negatives and have scanned them all - that was a huge project.
My first scrapbook pages were travel pages. I started as a paper scrapper. I quickly developed a preference for two page spreads. My early paper albums are SO heavy (not to mention costly).
Even as a digi scrapper I prefer two page spreads. I like pages that are either very similar to create a flow or quite different to make a contrast. The easiest way to make a contrast is to have a full page photo facing a collage of smaller ones, my albums seem to come together much more quickly that way.
Often it is the deciding on a theme that is the most time consuming. I'll search my gallery favorites for inspiration. I always settle on a theme that includes
* background paper
* fonts for the title and journaling (my favourite journaling font is joehand3)
* set of frames (or even better,a set of templates to make it super quick)
Why do you chose to scrap your photos (rather than use a "drag and drop" photobook printing service or just leaving them on your hard drive?)
I never leave my photos on my camera for long. I quickly upload them to my computer and rename them so I don't forget what they were about. I also use Lightroom to add the story of the photo to the metadata.
I have used a "drag and drop" photobook. That was the first photobook I had printed. Although I was able to finish it relatively quickly, I was frustrated by the limitations of the software. I like find control for photo placement and I love adding some color via some paper or brushwork to tie together all the photos on the page. It is so much fun to add in embellishments that work with the story and make the book so much more interesting.
I have divided my albums into four categories and I find that it helps me find a home for my photos and stories:
* 365 albums - photos of random details of my life or recording a special moment when there was just one photo. I keep them super simple so I can keep up to date easily.
* Travel albums - A4 albums such as my Yarra Valley one. I usually complete these fairly quickly - within 6 months of the trip.
* Family year albums - 12x12" double page spreads of family events. I have not yet finished a single one of these for printing!
* Little Adventures albums - these contain photos from photography outings, weekends away without the kids, and other special events not family related. They have a similar format to my travel albums.
Getting the stories recorded is so rewarding (I look back at my early photos where there is no story and it makes me a little sad). The friends I've made online make it so special. I enjoy my visit to the Designer Digitals gallery and forum each day.
I love digital scrapbooking and the richness it brings to my life :)
Where do you get your digital scrapbooking photobooks printed?
I have used many print services to print my digital scrapbooking photobooks - Australian ones such Momento, Albumworks, Photobook Australia and the international ones Blurb and Shutterfly.
I usually print with Albumworks because:
* They have A4 landscape books which I find perfect for my full page photos
* They have an "HD" paper which is slightly textured and gives the photos "zing"
* You download a standard easy-to-use software product to compose your album (the same one as used by many others such as Photobook Australia)
* You can drag photos directly from your folder on Windows onto your page
* You can right-click on photos on your page to see where they are in your folder (good for checking whether you want to replace it with the one before or after in your folder or add another photo to your page)
I shy away from Shutterfly because I don't like that I have to upload all my pages to their website first. It is a much slower workflow for me. I use Blurb a for all of 365 albums because they are the only one that allows up to 400 pages and they are very good value.
I try to make my photobook creation workflow as simple as possible. I always create my pages and save them in TIFF format with a filename that keeps them in order (eg the date or the page number). Then it is a simple matter to auto-import them into the photobook printing software when they are done. The albumworks software allows you to insert your layered tiff files which means I only have one copy of the file and if I make edits to my original TIFF the photobook updates automatically. Blurb requires jpg, so after all my proofreading I run a Photoshop batch process to convert my tiffs to jpg and then use Blurb's autofill to fill the pages.
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