Gotta Love Freebies!

Sorry to burst your bubble, this is not a giveaway - just wanted to show off a photo book I was recently gifted.  A friend of mine sent me a coupon for a free 8x8 photo book from Shutterfly.  I decided to turn my freebie into an alphabet book for my boys (two toddlers).  Instead of using their templates, I designed full pages to upload.  I was crunched for time to design it so I opted for a simple background.

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.