Summer Layouts

I have incorporated a method for documenting the season of summer for each of my children's albums. It utilizes either a single or double page layout spread with multiple photos highlighting the busy season. It works best, I find, for summer, because of the nature of the events, being outdoors, and the number of stories that the summer brings into their lives

Today I want to share a few of those layouts with you. As well as an inside look to my approach to each.

Summor08 is from the middle daughter's album. I formatted these photos on photo paper, and printed them in the grid fashion, leaving some open spaces for embellishments. This is one of the easiest ways to mass photos out for a layout, if you have a home printer. Summer08 houses 27 photos. I utilized bullet point journaling in the hand drawn journal lines. This layout just took no time at all.

This is the next year's layout for the same daughter. Not as many photos, but a great overview on the summer for her. I formatted each of these photos the same size. Cropped each one, then attached to the background paper in a true grid. Again, a few open spaces for some words and embellishment. This time I printed the bullet point journaling and cut and glued on the page.

This double page spread lines the various sized photos across the two pages. This gives you an idea of how to use two pages. I could have added even more photos and filled in the bottom portion of the layout. Many options to play with when you want to get a lot of photos out to show off.

And here is a sneak into a layout for the August gallery...a great opportunity to use fun and summery colors to show off oldest daughters summer of ten. Notice I keep the emphasis on the photos so that my kids can relive their story, and add just a bit of color and items to give it the extra touch it needs. My daughter is moving into the age where there is more emphasis on style and pretty. So I wanted this layout to reflect just that. It just keeps things simple so that I can tell each of my kiddos their story of the season.

Side Note: The kit for August is perfect for telling stories from summer's past as well as summer current. And many of the stickers are just perfect for July4. I used the massed out photo sketch for our July4 layout story. But you'll just have to wait till the gallery goes live to see that.

Have fun documenting your summer. And remember...keep it simple and doable.