Today, we are chatting about memories and nostalgia, but bear with me, as this stuff is important. This topic became a focus for me as I started to look for coffee table books for our lounge renovation. As I began to search for pictorial books of Vogue, Tiffany and London, I realised along with all those icons, I wanted to create a photo book of our own coffee table memories.
Life is chaos, or is it just mine? I am guessing not? But the chaos of our lives inspired the name of this blog ten years ago. A little project to store family memories. However, it very quickly became a business, and all the gorgeous family memories as the boys grew up were archived. I still have all those memories stored somewhere. But they are not on view.
As I discussed this with a friend, he commented, “Phones and clouds are amazing, but what if we lose the cloud, or when we are gone, the memories go with it?”. He is so right; if the memories aren’t there to look at and access, it’s an out-of-sight, out-of-mind scenario.
What You Will Find Here
How I Made My Own Coffee Table Memories With My Picture
With this in mind, I began to build a family album on My-picture.co.uk from our recent Florida trip with my oldest friend. You know, one of those trips that is so amazing you have post-holiday blues. I wanted to capture those moments forever, so I could flick through and recall those moments whenever I wanted to, but also send a copy to our friends as a thank you for being the best holiday companions.
My Picture Is Easy To Upload Photos To And Choose A Layout
What I love about My Picture is that you can choose a custom cover, theme and layout. This makes your photo album totally unique. Plus, these can all be customised and changed; nothing is set. It’s all down to your creativity.
I wanted our memory album to have a scrapbook feel and a little personality, and being able to choose every single aspect plus intermix themes helped me to achieve that. And you don’t have to stick to the suggested pages. You can change those too! I preferred the water layout on our theme, so I swapped many pages over to get the right look.
You Can Self Build Your Photo Book Or The Software Will Do It For You
If you are struggling for time, there is a handy feature that allows you to upload all of your images, and it will arrange them into a finished photo book. This is such a quick and easy way to build an album. Add the pictures, choose a theme, press go and let the My Picture software do its magic, approve the end result and order.
However, I wanted to arrange the book into categories to reflect each section of our trip. This was easy to do and allowed me to add photos to layouts or take pictures away depending on what I wanted to add to each page. The great thing is you can move back and forth through your photo book and make necessary changes.
A Great Photo Book Is All About The Finishing Touches
Because I wanted a scrapbook-style theme, I was able to add stickers and text to pages and little details that gave it a more scrapbook feel and personalised the book. There is a huge choice of images and clip art, which allows you with a lot of design freedom.
The book took me 2 hours to build and personalise; now I am a crafter, and making a scrapbook takes soooo long. So, having the option to create a digital scrapbook is brilliant. If I am honest, I could have made it quicker, but I am fussy and wanted my photo book to be just right.
It Also Makes A Fabulous Gift
As I made two copies, I was able to keep one and send one to our friends who were delighted, and it got me thinking. These photo books are easy to make and make great presents. The opotunites are endless.
Photo Book Ideas
- Yearly family chronicles are a great way to capture family memories year by year. I have all the photos on my phone, so they would be easy to transfer.
- Wedding albums.
- Wedding guest books, add photos of all guests with space for them to leave a comment.
- Our story books for weddings, from meeting till the wedding day.
- Baby memories
- Pregnancy journal
- Baby milestone books
- Holiday memory books
- Sports journals
- Home renovation journals (This is my next project)
- School and college yearbooks.
Get 10% Off Your Next Photo Book
Use this 10% discount code EXCHAOS10 as the check out to get your discount and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram if you do make a photo book and show me your creation.
Please note this post was a collaboration, but I am totally obsessed with making my own photo books, I have so many ideas.
