Every year I provide my parents with a two sheet layout to add to the scrapbook album I gave them.  I call this their “Year in Review” album.  I began this after my first child was born.  This gives my daughter’s grandparents a way to quickly glance at the things she accomplished throughout the year and other memorable moments in our lives.

I begin by going through all my digital photos for the year.  I try my hardest to narrow down the hundreds of pictures I took, to around twenty of the most memorable.  I then use Photoshop (you can really use any scrapbooking program), to size and crop the pictures so I can fit them all on two pages.  I typically use sizes: 3.5”x2.5”, 3.5”x3.5”, 2.5”x2.5”, etc.  You can size the pictures however you like, just so they have an even space that separates them from neighboring pictures.

You want to leave an area of the page blank, so you can add a “key”.  Use this space to title the layout with the year and descriptions for each picture.  I then number each picture and put the corresponding number and description in the “key”.  Once my pictures are put in place and numbered, I add color to the background of the “key” area.  Another tip is, if the pictures don’t line up right, simply add some color rectangles between the pictures.

As I said before, I have been making this scrapbook gift for years now and I believe it is well appreciated. 

Please check back to see the scrapbook gift I am just finishing up – “A Scrapbook Quilt”

Christina