GON Reader
Question
How to Put Together a Book of My Mother?
Hi Maria,
To start, I love and have used many of your organizing ideas.
My question is, I would like to put together a book of my mother with pictures, her recipes, and life stories of my mother written by my mother, now deceased, for her three grandchildren.
I am overwhelmed as to how to even start. Can you give me ideas how to accomplish this either digitally or manually?
I am somewhat computer savvy, so I might be able to do this digitally, but I am not sure. I appreciate your time.
-- Marianne Lifrieri
Maria's Response
Hi Marianne,
What a lovely idea...and even better that your mother wrote the memories herself. What a treasure!
First, let me answer your question about printed versus digital. Even though I am a paper minimalist with most paper in my life, as a scrapbooker my mind, heart, and hands always opt for printed versions.
I feel that those gifted with memory books will be more apt to enjoy them regularly if they're in printed form, displayed on a coffee table, rather than somewhere in digital land on their computers or in The Cloud.
That being said, if it were me doing this project, I would do BOTH digital and print. In other words, if I had to make three duplicate scrapbooks, to save time and energy, I would definitely prep in digital, and then have the digital company print out three copies for me to give to the grandchildren.
To tackle this, I would:
A. Photograph everything: Take photos of the photographs, recipes, life stories, etc. Once you do this, everything will be digital and easier to work with.
Be sure you have good lighting in the room.
You may want to use a tripod to
hold your digital camera or cell phone as steady as possible.
Lay the photos down on a simple, neutral-colored surface, like a beige piece of satin from your fabric store or a wood
table.
B. Decide on a company to use: Companies like Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Canva have templates you can use to make this process easy, whether you are tech-savvy or
not.
You upload the photos to the service and add them to the photo book templates as you so choose.
When you're all done, you can then get three copies printed and mailed to you. (Maybe four if you want one for yourself!)
Whatever you do, don't rush with this project. Do it slowly and enjoy the process.
I also recommend you invite a friend or two over for tea, when you feel you're done, to help you edit any titles or journaling you include. It's easy to make a typo or two. You'll appreciate having two other sets of eyes to catch those errors before the books are printed.
I'm excited for you and this project. Let me know if you run into any questions along the way.
