I made a photo book....

I decided before we left for Hawaii that I'd make a photo book for Jim and Lynn when we returned home. This was a special trip for them, and I wanted to commemorate it in a special memento.

I'd seen two photo books before my attempt at making one: One was of a family reunion weekend, and the other was of a wedding. These books looked so much more "intimate" and meaningful than a formal album does. At the same time, a photo book looks more "put together" than a typical photo album.

So while we were traveling, I tried to snap several candid photos of Jim and Lynn as they enjoyed their Hawaiian adventures.
Once home, it was time for me to get to work. Boy, was this ever a learning experience.

I chose to make the book at Shutterfly simply because I'd seen a Shutterfly photo book and thought the quality looked good. (Oh, also Shutterfly was having a "free shipping" special and, at the same time, was offering 20% off on all photo book orders. That did it for me.)

It was fun to "paste" photos into the layouts I chose for the various pages. The challenge, though, was to word the captions efficiently, because the space given for the caption was quite deceiving: I couldn't tell at what point the various captions would be "cut off" when they appeared on the actual photo pages.

Then there was the problem that came from removing photos, replacing them with new ones, and forgetting to change the original caption.

I plugged away at this project for several days, until I reached a point where I couldn't bear to look at it any more. So I clicked on "Place order" and hoped for the best.

I knew the photo book would arrive via UPS five days after I submitted the order. I was so worried about the final product that I couldn't bear to go back to the Shutterfly website and review the book.
Finally the photo book arrived. I was shocked at how lightweight it was. I'd chosen a leather cover with 22 pages. I thought that sounded like a substantial book. If I had it to do over again, I'd make it a 40-page book.

As I browsed through the finished product, I did find two errors, which are nagging at me still: I put an incorrect caption with one photo, and one of my captions got cut off mid-sentence. I constantly remind myself of these errors when I think of the finished book.

But still, I did learn a lot about the process with this first attempt, and I'd definitely make another photo book. It was fun to see Jim and Lynn look through the book and reminisce about our adventure together. I think they appreciate the book despite my two boo-boos.

And I'm hoping that anyone else who looks through the book won't see the errors anyway. So there. That's that. Back to my knitting.