Tutorial Tuesday: Association Photobook

***Once again it is Tutorial Tuesday and, once again, I don't know what to name my "creation". After checking out this Tutorial, I'd love to hear your name suggestions! also, please excuse the poor quality of these photos--they're all taken with my phone and are unfortunately blurry***

This week I made a photobook for Cutie Face. It has been unnaturally cold in Atlanta and it made me pause to think about what life will be like in the winter--will we be able to take the twice daily walks that we take now? Probably not!

This thought left me feeling a little blue--not only would we be worse for the wear, physically, but Cutie Face also wouldn't get her daily outdoor stimulation that she currently gets from viewing new sights and sounds on each walk.

So, I decided to take pictures of a lot of the things we pass every day and things that I also would like her to learn the names of. She and I went on a photo shoot on Sunday and took pictures around our neighborhood--hence the "Association Photobook" name--everything in this book is a picture of an object, building, etc. that she sees on our daily walks.

Here is what you'll need:

• I used posterboard to back my photos because I wanted something thick and sturdy
• Glue Stick or Rubber Cement
• Scissors
• Hole punch (not pictured)
• Book Rings (not pictured)
• Pictures
  

I took 48 pictures of:

• Buildings (school, house, apartment, stores, restaurants, gas station, fire station, post office, etc.)
• Objects on street (mailboxes, trash cans, phone booths, construction cones, fences, sidewalk, flag poles etc.)
• People and animals on the street (mailmen, walkers, dogs, squirrels, bikers, runners, baby joggers, etc.)
• Transportation (car, bus, taxi, firetruck, police car. Thankfully, we didn't see an ambulance!)
• Street/Traffic Signs (red, yellow, and green lights, walking man, stop hand, stop sign, crosswalk)
• Park items (playground, grass, flowers, trees, slide, swing, bench, water fountain, etc.)
• I'm sure you all can think of a lot more! and, think outside the box--do an association photobook for church if your child is afraid of Sunday school or do a book of their grandparents' houses and relatives' faces for when they go to visit!
  

First I cut my posterboard into fourths. My posterboard started out half the size of normal posterboard and came in a package of 5.

Organize your photos in the order you'd like them to be in the completed book. This took me a long time because I really wanted the book to "flow".

Unfortunately, I failed to think through the pictures and had lots of vertical pictures mixed with lots of horizontal pictures (see picture above). if I did it all over again, I'd most likely make all of them horizontal, though all of them vertical wouldn't be bad, either (see picture below).

I pasted all the pictures on the cut up pieces of posterboard USING BOTH SIDES, FRONT AND BACK. (see...doesn't it look better with all horizontal pictures?)

Once everything was pasted, I wrote descriptive captions (i laugh because the two that you see below say "stop" and "go" and aren't very descriptive! oh well!) under each picture.

I like to do everything in stages--paste them all and then caption them all (just like i put on both socks and then both shoes!) but feel free to caption as you paste!

Then I numbered each page so that I could remember the order<--this was a crucial step for me! I took them to Staples (they did a great job!) and had them laminate the pictures. It cost ~$9 to get all 24 pages laminated.

Cut all the pages out and put them in order

Place two strategic holes in each page using your hole puncher. I would punch a page, then use the punched holes as a template for the next page.

Make sure your pages are in order and then line them up with the holes

Thread a book ring through each opening. I think i chose book rings that were too big so I'm either going to get smaller ones or just add more pages!

Ta-Da! Finished book! (see what i mean about the gigundo book ring?)

Let your kiddo play with his or her new book!

All in all, this book probably cost about the same as getting one custom made on Snapfish or Shutterfly BUT there are a few crucial differences that make it a bit better--

• the pages are whatever size you choose
• the pages are laminated and HARD, much like a board book so that they wipe clean after messy fingers touch them
• the spiral book rings make the books easy to turn and you can add or take away pages easily

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I really loved taking Cutie Face on a walk after showing her this book (in fact, we even took the book with us on the walk!) and showing her the corresponding objects outside that were also on her book's pages.