keeping up with the johnsons

I've been working for a couple of weeks on a set of digital layout templates that finally made it into the ScrapGirls boutique last Thursday. I wanted to highlight them here on the blog just in case any of my scrapping friends don't regularly shop there.

The reason I'm so excited about them is because the were inspired by the reason I got into digiscrapping in the first place: to preserve in photo books some of the hundreds of photos that I take all the time! In late fall of 2006, I uploaded 60 or so photos to Snapfish and created one of their bound books. I used their templates and ordered 3 copies: one for us, and one for each of our parents. When they arrived, I was thrilled to see the full cover casebound covers--covers with my 3 little boys and their smiling faces looking straight at me. I was less than thrilled when I opened them. I knew that the layouts were monotonous: at the time (and they may have improved things in the last two years), they were little more than 8 evenly spaced blocks to each page. The thing that really bummed me out, though, in addition to the too-small photos, were the teeny-tiny captions. I really felt like I needed to give a magnifying glass to our parents along with the book so they could read it!

Just a couple of weeks after I received the books, I discovered ScrapGirls and my life changed dramatically. Not only did I discover a passion for digital scrapbooking, but it led to an even greater passion for graphic design. I knew from the moment I started seeing the possibilities that I would never, ever have that kind of cookie-cutter photo book again.

I attempted to design my own photo book last fall but with the adjustment of homeschooling for the first time and having Loys start seminary, I just never got finished with the pages. Then, I became a member of the design team at ScrapGirls and the idea to create a set of templates that would allow people to create their own photo books--with cool layouts!--started percolating.

Which brings me to the subject of this post: the actual templates themselves! I am calling them Photo Book 1 and fully intend to create at least one more set in the next few weeks, possibly more. Here's what they look like:

The cool thing about them is that they were designed to be versatile enough that you can rotate or flip them easily to maximize your design options. You can also easily expand them to 2 pages for a really dramatic look.

If my own excitement about the product weren't enough, I was psyched to get an e-mail today from a member of the ScrapGirls layout design team. Caroline lives in Luxembourg and has just launched a scrap-for-hire business. She will be using these templates to create books for other people and even has a sample on her blog. How cool is that?!

So if you are in the market to create a photo book for yourself or someone else, check out this template set. With the time you save designing the pages, you might actually finish it in time to give it as a Christmas gift!

P.S. If you do end up using these, I'd *love* to see your final product! :)