Yearbook 2013

Last year, Big Picture Scrapbooking had a live online (and in person) event on 12/12/12.  It was a project-based workshop to make a yearbook wrapping up 2012 in a compact, but soul-searching minibook. I loved the product, and my family and I have flipped through it countless times during this year.

I decided to make another one wrapping up this year.  I used the same prompt .pdfs from last year, and set to work.

I used a recollections 6 x 8 in travel binder (the Michael's store brand binder that's half way between a Sn@p binder and a Smash Book).  For the title, I used Glossy Accents to adhere the Thickers to the cover and the spine.

The quote on the first page is from one of the handouts from last year's class, but I love the idea that happy memories are the best things I could leave for my kids.

I chose all my favorite photos from 2013, and printed them on my Polaroid Z2300 (fun printer, horrible camera).  The Zink paper is sticky-backed, so I didn't have to use very much adhesive in this book at all.

Once they were all printed,  I grouped them by event, theme, and chronology and pasted them into the book

Once all the pictures were in, I found places for the .pdf prompt sheets from the class that I wanted to reuse, and pasted them in as well.

With that structure laid out, I took a couple of days to do the journaling.  I wrote whenever I had a minute or two here and there.  I didn't think too much about it, just wrote whatever came to my head when I turned the page.  I did all my writing from the front of the book to the end.

My favorite pages of 2012's yearbook was an alphabetical list of places that were significant to our family during the year.  I really had to stretch to find places for some of the letters, but that process was a great way to think about the last year in a different way, so I decided to do it again.

Here are a few more of the pages from the yearbook.

It's only the 30th of December so I'm leaving one page blank for a photo of our New Year's Eve activities.  We're going to have the cousins over for a movie night, pizza party, and sleep over.  I'll take one photo from the night and put it here.

The last little thing that I liked about this binder that made me choose it over some of the other ones that were available was the last page.  I thought it was a great way to end a mini book.  I'm planning to add 2013 just below the word "adios."

What projects are you planning to do to wrap up 2013?