Hello lovely. Caylee here.

Since I do Project Life, I feel less of a need to create photobooks that document our every day. However, there really is a special kind of magic with them, and they’re totally different to regular mini books, scrapbooks, or pocket page documenting. Sometimes with all the frills of scrapbooking, things get kind of crazy. Photobooks kind of force me to go back to basics.

The photos. The memories. The things that are important right at their core.

As I prepare to create my annual photobook (yep, in June! I have a toddler now and things are insane), I went through my old ones and wrote a list of tips to ignite my love for the things again.

1. Keep it simple

Don’t overthink. Don’t overthink. Don’t overthink. Back in 2013 I started with a “top 10” photobook purely since paislee press offered it as a template. This format became the easiest for me to maintain, and I now have 5 photobooks that are, quite simply, ten of my favourite things that happened that year. These aren’t my top 365. Top 10. I don’t care if it has a terrible photo. I don’t care if it has zero journaling. My focus is on writing my favourites, finding 10 images that represent them, and sending them off to print.

2. Make use of the help that’s available

Kind of goes hand in hand with number 1. Use a template. Ask a friend or family member for input. I send my husband an email each year asking for his top 10 moments. He gives me his, I give mine, and we figure out the favourites. Don’t rely on your own skills, let the photobook software help you out.

3. Don’t get stuck on the printer

Just get it printed! I use Blurb for cheaper books (Week in the Life, our house…). I use MILK / Moleskine for fancy ones. There are a whole host of them out there, don’t allow finding “the perfect printer” stop you.

4. Do it bit by bit

I scanned in my entire family photo albums and turned them into photobooks. It was a MASSIVE undertaking, and I would have gone completely crazy had I not split into the tiniest of tasks for each stage.

5. Break the rules

You don’t HAVE to have every photo the same. You don’t HAVE to make a collage. You don’t HAVE to have typed journaling. Your photos can be circular. You can use digital scrapbook paper in the book (Catherine has AMAZING photobooks that use digital paper!).

Beyond that, you can also add to the book once you’ve received it. Here are a few fun ideas I’ve done in the past:

handwrite on the photobook papers after you’ve received it
add scrapbook embellishments – real paper, alpha stickers, embellish it the way you usually would
add paint!
add texture with modeling paste

6. Use handwriting

As I mentioned earlier, I went through every single photo album that my mother has and turned them into four photo albums for each member of my family. Each book documents our “life story” from birth until we left home. My parents’ books include a few pages of their parents’ stories, and I got my mom and dad to each write in theirs directly so that we have that magical personalisation that old school photo albums had.

I also included the handwritten notes at the back of photos. Some of the handwriting has come from my great grandmother. There is no reason why a photobook should be less personal.

7. Use real world pieces

Scan business cards, invitations, greeting cards, notes, coins, tickets, anything that has value as a memory. Put them in just like you would any regular photo.

8. Don’t wait for big events to create a photo book

We tend to glamourise photobooks, but they are really awesome for everyday documenting too. Here are some ideas that are not event based that I’ve saved in my Evernote:

Week in the Life – every day snapshot into a week of our life with some minimalist design elements and journaling
Home – a peek into our home and neighbourhood
Abstract – a collection of abstract art I’ve made
Art Journal – scanned in pages of my art journals
a collaboration of images from the group of art journalers I’m friends with, I reckon it’d be so special to have all my friends’ photos on my coffee table to page through
Photo Albums > Photo Books and digitising old photos
Honeymoon – our trip to Crete
Journal – print out a template for keeping a 30 day journal and filling in on the printed photo book
His / Hers – a comparison / self portrait in objects for my husband and I
mama / baby
30 Day Challenges – photographs (and journaling) of a 30 day challenge (e.g. 30 days of forest walks, 30 days of meditation, 30 days of drawing)
My Life in Books – photographs of my husband’s (and my) top 25 books
Collections – photographs of the collections we have (paint tubes, Christmas market mugs, 30 of the exact same pen, wood veneer, cameras, etc)
Photo Walks – a documentation of the walks that I go on with my camera. There’s a theme and I take photos according to that (e.g. a colour, circle, look down, signs, numbers, doors, etc) – they make for a nice group of photos together
30 – who I am at 30 years old
Favourites – a collection of my favourites in a category
Cookbook – our favourite recipes
Note to self – a collection of “pep talks” with my handwriting scanned in and a self portrait on the other side of the page
Advice – a collection advice from each of my favourite people
Ten – top ten moments