Hello everyone, it's been a while since my last post! Life is really full and I have sacrificed blogging for actual memory keeping and if you follow me on instagram you will agree :)
I'm working full time now, so I have time most evenings to be creative (my kids are grown - oh when did that happen!) and capture all our memories and record life in this phase where they are not often at home anymore (yikes). Sometimes in my PL you can see that there are more stories than actual photos, and that's why!
In fact I spend all my free time creating and scrapping and have ventured into art and bible journaling too, and one night asked my husband, "Am I wasting my life away?" to which he answered, "then I think it is a great waste of life." I guess I can carry on! :)
UK Travel Photobook
Today I am very excited to share my UK trip photobook, that arrived last week from Shutterfly. It has been more than 3 years since the trip! Although I had all the pages done, somehow didn't complete the covers and first and last pages till recently. What was I waiting for?
You may remember this post, 'Artsy and Quirky London' when planning for this album, where I decided to make it quirky and interesting like how we found London and the British, and went for eclectic, hipster, artsy as the theme. And so I paired artsy drawings and elements with black/white/grey geometric backgrounds. Really fun approach and this is the result. (To read about the trip and see those layouts, check out these posts from Jan 2015 , Feb 2015, Mar 2015, Apr 2015, July 2015, Aug 2015, Sep 2015, and Nov 2015)
It turned out to be 106 pages and as usual I printed through Shutterfly (as I did my 16 other photobooks), and the book is everything I hoped it would be!
Video Flip Through
I managed to video a flip through! But the quality that blogger allows me to upload here is rather low, I am going to try to upload a higher quality version to instagram if you want to check out there :)
I actually had great fun creating this, and even managed to add a cute music clip 'Tuesday Afternoon' by Izzy Hyman!
And here are more close-ups.
May I also share this last page - words from the PL pages I did right after the trip. Top 55 things we did in London and more.
See those PL pages here. They are some of my favourites!
Some technical pointers in making the book.
I still do my books in non lay-flat pages to save costs as there are so many pages! I love how they look and feel and they are thin (this one was about 1/2 " or 1.5 cm thick) and I can fit a lot of the books on my shelves.
These are some things to keep in mind if you want to do it the way I did:
My layouts (and templates) are all in 24x12 sizes. For uploading to Shutterfly I save the left sides and right sides as separate jpegs (12x12 each). (I believe Shutterfly has a new service that allows you to load up 24x12 jpegs directly but I have not tried it). My tried and tested way to is make sure you save the left and right images with a bit of overlap in the centre of the double page, as a small margin is bound into the book and will not be visible. See my old posts here and here on more information how to do this. I also avoid putting faces or journaling that goes across the middle of the double page. Generally I am not fussy if some part of the image is 'hidden' and just greatly enjoy the panaromic spread of double pages in 24x12 glory!
Shutterfly Album Cover Template
I have saved the template I used for the cover of my 12x12 book for you here. This is cover #5 that I'm sharing, see the right side bar to links of the other cover templates that I've shared in the past. They will work for the shutterfly 12x12 books!
Japan Travel (Vol IV)
And now onto the new layouts from our Japan trip - from back in Dec 2015, lol! I am super updated on my daily scrapbooking aka Project Life, but my travel layouts, well I take my time, and enjoy re-living the trips. This is volume IV, (see vol I, and II, and III here). There's only about two more volumes to go to complete it, so yay!
My approach to this album has been changing, because I took such a long time and I was inspired by different things all the time! But I kept the backgrounds constant - all white. In these next four layouts I have gone back to the same style as the UK album, with scattered and skewed photos across the page, and added only paint to the white backgrounds.
So here is the day we took a trip to these tiny post towns in the Japan alps region. In days long past when people had to walk to travel anywhere and to send word/mail, these post towns were dotted in these parts for rest between towns. They remain small and quaint save for some tourist shops and are really pretty and a wonderful insight into life in those days!
(click on image for larger view)
The main objective of coming here is to attempt the 7.8km trek from Tsumago to Magome, two of the towns, and that is along the Nakasendo trail. It would have been prettier if it had snowed, but somehow that year snow was delayed, though it was below freezing point, but we had a wonderful walk anyway! It was a little unnerving though that there were numerous warnings of bears and bells to ring to fend them off!
The next stop in the Alps area was to Kairuzaiwa - our one night in an fairly upmarket Ski Resort with its own factory outlets! Alas there was no snow! But never fear, man-made to the rescue. Nothing like the real deal, but we shall not complain. :) The men had learnt to ski in Beijing so they were good, but I struggled and simply could not get those old legs coordinated enough - it was great fun while it lasted though!
Then we are back in Tokyo again and visited the Imperial Palace grounds (you aren't actually allowed in the palace because the Emperor and Empress live there!) on a free guided walk by local volunteers. Love guided walks! So informative and the guides shared so many stories about the royal family, their line, their love story, history, the 47 Ronins, and so much more. Not to mention it was so beautiful! If you ever go to Tokyo, make sure you take this free walk!
All of these layouts are available as templates in the store here, if you are interested, thank you!
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