Craft Time: Anniversary Photo Book

For Kameron's 1st Anniversary present, I took on a big project. The theme for the first year is paper. I could not tell you how many times I changed my mind on what to give him / make for him. Finally I settled on the idea of a photo book of pictures from our first year of marriage.

First I found all the pictures that I wanted & then cropped them to a square. (For a different project I used this technique so that I could fit square photos into square picture frames as seen in THIS post). I really liked how the square photos looked on 4x6 paper, so I stuck with it. Then I ordered the pictures online & waited for their arrival

After they arrived, I had to decide how to put the whole project together. I pulled out my big container of permanent markers and some washi tape, and went to work drawing on the pictures, writing descriptions, inside jokes, decorations, etc.

 Then I used a 3-hole punch on the left side of all the pictures.

 And bound them together with yarn.

 This is how it looked on the outside.

 This is how it looked on the inside.

Then using an old cereal box, I cut it in the shape of my book. and used a stapler to bind everything together. Using my markers again, I decorated the front cover.

 The inside cover.

 And the back cover.

And wrapped it.

Somethings I learned during this project / some things I want to change for next time.

• This way of binding was definitely not the best, though it does work.
• Since I didn't have all the pictures I wanted, but still bound it together, it will be torture to add them in later
• I want to put the pictures back-to-back next time for a better look & feel.
• I can write on the left side of the pictures (origianally I thought the binding would not allow for that...)

(to see the post about the gifts we gave each other, click here)