I chose three pastels for background colors, contrasting darker colors for the text and then designed a few simple patterns to lay over the pastels (open circles, open stars, open diamonds and open squares).
I wrote out a list of words that start with each letter of the alphabet, words that mean something in particular to my family. I waded through 2 years of photos to find some that would fit at least one word for each letter and then narrowed it down. Because it was only a 20 page book, I had to put two words to a couple of photos. For example, I used this photo of my older son picking strawberries out of his garden and called it "G is for garden, H is for harvest".
After completing the pages, I designed a simple cover page and back page using the same colors, patterns and fonts. The back page is a photo index so as the boys grow we will remember when each picture was taken.
I'm thrilled with the way it turned out. Although it was put together quickly and I wish I had more pages, it is a very special book that the boys already LOVE to read and will be with us for a long time to come.
