One of the overwhelming aspects of documenting anything – a school year, a vacation, the daily grind – is that we can accumulate so many photos that it becomes impossible to pick which ones to use in our albums.

We recently spent eleven days traveling in Spain and Portugal. We visited Madrid, Sevilla, and the Algarve. It was a spectacular vacation, but we saw and did so much – and took hundreds of photos in the process!

We’re living in Europe for a couple of years, and while I plan to put the bulk of our pictures into photobooks, I’ve been documenting the highlights each month using pocket pages. It gives me the chance to capture any ephemera we want to save (ticket stubs, hotel keys, etc), and it’s been a great way to go into a bit more detail on some of our adventures.

But for this trip, I really wanted to document the entire thing in a condensed format. Since the trip was eleven days long, I decided to use a full layout – two 12×12 pocket pages – to tell the story.

I broke it down, giving a 4×6 space to each day with a “title” photo in the upper left corner.

I wanted to keep the layout looking cohesive, so I picked just a few design elements to use throughout: minimalist 4×6 templates, my favorite font for captions, and hand-lettered numbers denoting each day.

In Photoshop I selected the numbers (they’re attached to the word “week”) and dragged them onto each photo template. It took a few minutes, but I love how the brush script jumps out against the really simple templates.

In a few instances I also changed the color of the brush script to white if I placed it directly on a photo.

I included one little piece of ephemera – a ticket to the Prado Museum – clipped to a simple journal card from the Project Life Everyday Edition.

I tried to use a mix of color and black and white photos, which I love. But I really did minimal editing on the pictures. My general rule of thumb is to keep natural light photos in color and convert indoor photos or pics with odd coloring to black and white.

It thought it would be difficult to select only one or two photos from each day, but it really wasn’t. The limit on space actually made the process very simple.

In most cases, I used two photos to document the day. I tried to select photos that would really remind me of the major highlight or highlights of the day.

In a few cases, I used just one photo. I like the mix of single shots with smaller photos, and in a few cases, the single photo was enough to tell the story of the day.

For our last day, I used a photo I took of some things stacked on the bed at our AirBNB while we were packing. I could have used a picture of the villa itself, but I like how light and airy this shot is, and it reminds me of that morning – having coffee by the pool, looking at the ocean, and getting ready to say goodbye.

The perfect photo isn’t necessarily the most obvious one.

This was such a fun layout to assemble, and it took no time once the photos were printed. I just slipped them into the pockets, picked a couple of journal cards, and I was done.

Do you find selecting photos a difficult part of your process? Do you like the constraints of the pockets or do you prefer a more open-ended process?

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xo, Catherine

Products used: 4×6 templates vol. 4, this week | 4×6 journal cards and photo overlays, Project Life Everyday Edition, Becky Higgins pocket page Design B, Project Life by Stampin’ Up pocket page Design 5