One of my favorite types of albums to make is a Year in Review album because they generally come together quickly and they give a great summary of my family’s main events of the year. Really if you only do one album a year, this is the type of album I would recommend creating.
I would like to share a few things I have learned from creating this type of album. Included in this article are pictures of my most recent Year in Review album. This album was from one of my classes at a Creating Keepsakes Convention that was sponsored by Rusty Pickle.
Album size. Use a medium sized album for this project. 8 X 8 has worked really well for me. It is a nice coffee table sized book that you can easily hold and look through, but not so small that you can barely fit a picture on the page.
Page Design. Keep the same page design throughout the entire album. In this album, I stamped the journaling lines on the left-hand page for every layout. The left hand page also had patterned paper that made small accents on the page. The right-hand page has a 6 X 6 block of patterned paper to use as a photo mat. I also used a few other pieces of patterned paper as a boarder to the photo mat.
Page Titles. Print the name of each month from your printer and just tear each month name out and attach to the page. This gives the album a unified look.
Patterned Paper. One fun option is to choose patterned paper that goes with a theme for that month. For example, you could use patriotic themed paper for July and autumn themed paper for October or November.
Journaling. Keep a consistent journaling style throughout the album. I choose to use bullet points each month to share a few highlights from that month.
Photos. Choose just 2 or 3 of your favorite photos for each month. Don’t try to cram too much onto each page.
Just remember to keep it simple and keep the focus on your photos and journaling.