My 20-Year Digital Scrapbooking Photo Book Evolution

In this post, I’m sharing the story of my 20-Year Digital Scrapbooking Photo Book Evolution

My 20-Year Digital Scrapbooking Photo Book Evolution

I’ve been scrapbooking one way or another since I was a child.

• Sticking fabric, cut-outs, and memorabilia on paper has always been my jam.
• I have been an artist and craft-lover from the get-go.

Scrapbooking evolved into memory keeping when I became a Mum.

• Ella was born in 2002, while we were stationed at Misawa Air Force Base in Japan.
• I wanted a way to share her with our families overseas, so I began paper scrapbooking.

Year 2003

This was the beginning of the Holiday Project for me.

• Ella was 18 months old, and I documented her first ‘real’ Christmas Day.
• i.e,. She was beginning to get the magic of Christmas.

Year 2004

Luke arrived about 19 years ago.

• This holiday season was more about surviving a very unhappy baby with colic.

Year 2005

Another Christmas Day Album

• These chronological approaches to documenting a single day worked well, enabling me to capture all those little moments that are so special when your children are small.

Year 2006

Thanksgiving in Denver

• We made the trip with our 2 and 4-year-olds from Alaska, where we were living, to see family and friends in Denver.

A Holiday Project at this stage in my life might just have pushed me over the edge 🙂

Year 2007

Enter Ali Edwards Days of December

• My first month-long project was using a collection of templates by Jessica Sprague.
• We had just returned from Thanksgiving in Hawaii, and we were ALL sick the entire month of December.
• I had pneumonia just before Christmas, and we had to cancel our trip to see Santa in Fairbanks, Alaska.
• But this was when I grasped the concept of celebrating the everyday and finding joy in the worst of circumstances.

A seed had been planted…

Year 2008

A Wedding in the United Kingdom.

• My sister got married in Scotland, and we enjoyed Christmas with my family in England.

An England 2008 album replaced the Holiday Project.

Year 2009-2010

The beginning of curated albums.

• An experiment in telling my stories through a series of layouts curated into a photo book.
• Loved the freedom to create art, but reinvention with every layout is time-consuming and led to disjointed double-page spreads when printed.

Something new learned, to discard or carry on to the next year.

Year 2011

The First ‘Official’ Holiday Project.

• I created the first Holiday Template Album for sale under the Anna Aspnes Designs brand.
• I shared my process, techniques, and pages via blog posts on the old Anna Aspnes Design Typepad Blog (which no longer exists).
• The focus was to combine the magic of Christmas with everyday moments, and the double-page spreads were titled with the big seasonal themes.

Year 2012

The project quickly evolved in terms of style and approach.

• As I went about my day, I settled on a word that ‘prompted’ the topic of my pages
• Single words were used to inspire a story, then paired with photos.
• My project celebrated with seasonal magic plus stories, photos, and anecdotes from the past 12 months.

The project became an opportunity to reminisce on the past year and create one last ‘Hurrah’ in my documenting endeavors.

Year 2013

This was the year I started combining photos from previous years and decades.

• My childhood photos and memories were compared with Ella and Luke’s childhood experiences.
• Digital scrapbook pages became a place of bringing together photos with similar themes across different periods.
• The project had evolved to gathering photos that supported a word prompt relevant to that day’s story.

Observing patterns across the generations is a favorite approach.

Year 2014

The project becomes more refined.

• I’m now honing the approach further; the time it takes to complete the digital scrapbooking pages without sacrificing meaning.
• The focus is less on the art and more on the photos and stories.

The aim is to maximize the time I have available during this busy season.

Year 2015

Experimenting and discovering my preferences.

• One simple inspiration sparks one story, supported by a myriad of photos.
• It’s about reflection and reminiscing on the past year in my digital scrapbook pages.
• The project assumes a storytelling approach, in which I am the narrator and purveyor of all stories.

Year 2016

Seek more joy in the season and look to carve out more time for techniques.

• It’s still about a daily story or inspiration, but I’m playing more with the art and techniques.
• I engage more in a little daily ArtPlay, which is fun and mitigates some of the seasonal chaos.
• The project is a vehicle for finding a few moments of calm and appreciating otherwise ‘lost moments.’

Year 2017

Found my groove with this digital scrapbooking project.

• Use the daily prompts to spark a story from the year and find connections in previous years.
• Bringing photos together by commonality is one of my all-time memory-keeping favorites.

Year 2018

Having fun with the stories and developing my voice.

• Now adding the date to photos from different periods.
• Staying consistent and gaining confidence in my digital scrapbooking approach.

Which also makes you fall in love with this style of project even more.

2019

Simple focus on words and photos.

• With a tried-and-tested process in place, I’m just enjoying the process.
• Planning has become key in building digital scrapbooking pages with efficiency and ease.
• It’s hands-down become my favorite creative project of the year.

Year 2020

Intentional tweaking.

• Ditched the titles on my pages to focus on the Story for each prompt.
• Inclusion of other fun ‘bits and pieces’ to enhance my digital scrapbook pages.

Year 2021

The storytelling just gets better…

• And Better!
• Practice makes Perfect.

Year 2022

Enter the opportunity to learn something new.

• A month to focus and master a new technique.
• This was the year of simple out-of-bounds photo extractions.

Year 2023

Bringing the past and present together to tell my stories.

• Photos from different years and seasons.
• Simple photos, stories, and embellishment.
• Always learning, refining, and improving my craft.

Year 2024

Embracing Adobe Photoshop technology with easy extractions.

• The focus in this project was to reuse/recycle digital products on hand.
• JUST SO MUCH LOVE FOR THESE BOOKS.

Summary

The project has been flexible over the years, adapting to my creative mood and the different phases of my life.

• It has grown with me, evolved, and transformed.
• LOVE the growing collection of albums on my shelves.
• Especially when viewed as a Library of family stories over the years.

This annual project has become a December tradition over the last 2 plus decades.

• It’s how I enjoy the season, reflecting on the miracle of us.
• It’s a simple way to create an annual time capsule of photos and memories
• I am here for every single moment of it 🙂

It’s never too late to start building your own library of photo books.

They look so pretty all lined up on a bookshelf or stacked on a table.