Creating a Heritage Album - Step 2

[This is Mike’s second installment in our series of blog posts for creating a heritage album. Click here to see the first in this series.]

Now that you have spent the last few weeks treasure hunting, gathering intel from every family member you can think of and electronically storing it, the real fun begins.

When I am speaking with my American friends and they ask me how the weather is up here in Canada, to simplify our conversation I do a quick calculation in my head from Celsius to Fahrenheit: take my local temp, double it and add 30. So if it is +10° in my backyard, I tell my friend in Southern California that it’s 50°. The fascinating thing is when you are trying to map out the total length of your heritage album the same calculation will usually apply. If you have a 20-page book in mind, there is a good chance it will be 60 or 70 by the time you’re finished. The only “right” thing is that in the end you are happy with the work you have done.

In Lesson One you decided whether the book will be one of “length” or “width.” Now is the time to start assigning names to pages. The easiest way to do this is physically write a list of those people who you know will be included in your album. For this step I started a new project in StoryBook Creator. I left the pages blank other than inserting a line of text on each with the name of the person designated for the page(s). This will give you a good overview, a rough idea of how your album will flow as well as the possible length. I assure you, the order will be rearranged as you go, but you never lose the guideline which is the key point, remembering back to charting our course in Lesson One.

Hopefully, as you have spent the last few weeks thinking about your project, you have in mind a desired look and design for your album. The nice thing about using StoryBook Creator for these projects is that the possibilities for creative design are virtually endless. It can be as simple as using the same background for every page (which I have seen some excellent examples of), using predesigned templates, using a unique design on each page, or using a combination of design layouts. Spend some time looking at what others have done. There are always some great examples posted by the administrators and fans on the Creative Memories Go Digital Facebook page.

So for this lesson, the steps to work on are as follows:

1. Create a new project in StoryBook Creator.
2. Assign names to each page of those people you want included in the book, giving you a good overview of how it will flow.
3. Find examples of what others have done for their heritage albums and decide the design layout you will be doing for yours.

Go back to Step 1
Go ahead to Step 3

Mike Pleice, Creative Memories Go Digital Facebook Page Admin