Putting together our annual family vacation album is always a challenge for me, but it is looked forward to by all as a major Christmas present, and so onward I go. The strategies I learned from an aA class on photobooks have become true workhorses—I call upon them constantly to keep me on course. There's another class being offered right now (more here: https://annaaspnesdesigns.com/travel-photobook-project-faqs/), and I highly recommend anybody who does, or wants to do, an album of any sort, check it out. I myself have registered, in order to go deeper into the process of album making.

This spread is #3 in my book, chronicling a walk that I took with my two daughters (and three kids and three dogs) on the spur of the moment after the guys had headed off to an early golf tee time. No sunscreen. No water. No hats. My daughter in her sheepskin slippers for heavens sakes. We had only a rough idea of where we were going. A lady who passed our merry group stopped us to say we were bringing beauty to the world and that reinforced our resolve to reach our destination. Which we did. The pictures are pretty low-grade, but we had an absolutely awesome time and the story is definitely worth telling.

Once you have the guidelines for album projects in your head, you can actually use any of the album templates in the aA store. Here I used a spread from a Multiphoto Template Album and an Artplay collection that suited my theme.

The backgrounds of any spread can be challenging for me (especially the gutter transitions between pages), and here I used Oasis Artsy paper #3 adjoined with solid #5, with a few transfers and a Skribble Sun to provide transition across the gutter. I also modified the word cluster with a label from the Amity minipallette. I hope to learn more about those gutter transitions in the upcoming album class.