Create a beautiful family milestones panel in minutes!

I love uniquely beautiful pieces of home decor - especially ones that involve celebrating family. One day not long ago, I ran across a truly beautiful poster project idea on Pinterest that showed important dates in the lives of one family, and decided I wanted to try to create something based on that project to put on a Creative Memories Photo Panel (US|Canada). Using StoryBook Creator Software (US|Canada), some fun fonts and a few overlays, I did it!

Here's the project I came up with:

Isn't it lovely? :)

You'll notice that the most important dates in the lives of this family's members are included - Dad's birth date, Mom's birth date, their wedding date, then the birth dates of each of their children. You'll note that just below the wedding date on my project, there's a date with two names below it - they are twins. That's how you can handle them if necessary.

In the event that you're designing this project for a larger or smaller family, simply copy and paste one of the sets of info (the date and the name) or remove one set, then adjust your spacing accordingly to finish.

Lining all of these things up wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to do, so I decided I would share my template with you (for free - keep reading for the link!) so if you decided that you'd like to create the same type of project, you'd need not stress out trying to space things apart, line them up, etc. but focus on the fun part - adding dates, names and choosing a color. I chose turquoise - you choose your favorite.

Here's one very important note to be aware of before tackling the creation of this project: Assuming that you'd like to have your dates and names appear the same way mine do, you will need to be sure to have the following two fonts installed on your computer before opening up the software to create this project:  Jellyka Delicious Cake and Twenty12. If you need a few tips on installing fonts, the pixies over at Pixels2Pages have a brief tutorial on font installation. If you still are having issues with fonts, let us know here and we'll walk you through it. Once you're sure these fonts have been installed, carry on to the next paragraph.

To get started in creating this project, simply download the free digital artwork package here, install it to your software, then create a new 11x8.5 Portrait Photo Panel project and choose the Family Milestones Photo Panel design. You're then ready to let the design fun begin!

One more tip: the black horizontal lines that encase each name on the project are each individually placed on the project. Should your names run over into the lines, simply cut away some of the lines using the cutting tool. Should the lines encasing your names be too short, simply delete them and copy a set from another line that may work better.  Easy peezy!

One last thing I will mention - while this would look super fab on a regular photo panel, it looks gorgeous on a metal panel.

Enjoy! :)

Comments

[Vsueinman]

Jenny I saw the same post on pinterest and I loved the quote "what a difference a day makes." I did a photo panel using the Rustic Simplicity kit but I used the quote.

[Jenny Dammann]

That's very odd - when I click on it, it asks me if I want to save it... and where to? Can you try right clicking it and seeing what happens?

Here's the direct link where it is located:
http://downloads.creativememories.com/StoryBook/Free_Content/FamilyMilestones11x8.5PortraitPhotoPanel.package

[Amy]

I'm with Lisa: every time I click on the "free digital artwork package here" link, I get the following message: "The page you requested was not found." Do I need to configure something differently or is there another place you can post this where we can try and access it?

[Jenny Dammann]

Hi Lisa - it's still up there, just click on the link that sayd "free digital artwork package here".

Hope that helps :)
JD

[Lisa Brown Graham]

I can't access the template? Has it been moved?

[Jenny Dammann]

Hi Karen!
You can't directly use this template as the page of a storybook, but you could possibly start up a photo panel project with these components in them, then copy & paste them all into the document, then space out. Hope that helps!

Jeny

[Laurie Twibell]

This is beautiful! To make sure that the horizontal lines were a consistent distance from our names, I typed in two temporary O's at the beginning and end of each name. After using them as a guide as to where to cut the lines, I deleted them.

[Tinaanderson]

Thank you for including twins - I have wanted to do this project, but wasn't sure how to list my twins birthday.

[Beth Thomander]

Love this Jenny! Thanks for the idea!

[Jen1877]

Another great idea! I LOVE these metal photo panels!

[Karenhpeck]

Can this template be used as a page of a storybook? (I've not used digital panel pages before).

karen