An Instagram Photo Book ~ The Perfect Gift

I love giving great gifts. I usually rack my brain trying to come up with the perfect gift for family and friends. For the most part I give good gifts; I desire to give great gifts. For years I have made photo books and calendars for my mom and mother-in-law for Christmas. The one year I didn't make the calendar I heard about it all year. My mom was completely lost for 12 months. It made me realize that she really loves that gift. She will get a calendar every year from now on!

When my kiddos were invited to a birthday party for a friend in my son's 7th grade class, I had just listened to the awesome ScrapGals podcast all about selfies. A few days later while browsing Michael's with my daughter, it hit me! An Instagram selfie album would be the perfect give for a 13 year old girl! I found this little 4x4 Becky Higgins two ring binder at Hobby Lobby (because Michael's didn't have it.)

 

The album was a huge hit! I'm not sure who was more excited, her receiving the gift or me giving it. The album I'm showing in this blog post is actually the second Instagram album I have made. When I saw how much everyone loved the first one, I decided to make one for my dear friend's daughter 'just because.' After all, sometimes the best gifts are the 'just because' ones. I can't wait to see her face when I hand it to her. :)

The book contains about 40 4x4 photos, no words, no embelishments, just photos. I used most of her photos from the past year, but not all. The cool thing is there is plenty of room to add more photos if she wants.

Let's talk about how I printed the pictures. I print most of my pictures at home using my Canon Pixma MG6320 and thought that would be easiest for this project. After taking screen shots of all the Instagram photos and a few failed attempts at printing directly from my camera roll (you will get 4x4's enlarged onto 4x6 photo paper.)  I tried using the Becky Higgins Project Life app; this would work if you want to print a 4x4 pic with 2, 2x2's on 4x6 photo paper, but that's not what I needed for this project. So...after taking the screen shot, I used the Diptic app and put the photos in the 4x4 template with a little white border. Next, I exported the photo to my camera roll and emailed it to myself. The last step was opening 4 photos at a time into Photoshop onto an 8.5x11 canvas, resizing and printing.

This little book turned out just as fabulous as the first one! Hey, there I am on the right ~ We love getting all the girls together for pedicures!

For the last page I took a screen shot of her Instagram cover page. Neat little capture of how many followers she has and how many she is following. I love her motto ~ It's really okay if you don't like me, not everyone has good taste.

In this day and age printed photos are rare. Our photos are being kept behind screens instead of in our hands where they should be.  So make someone's day (or year) and share some printed photos ~ they will love it, I promise!


 

It's only been a year and a half ~

How is it possible that it's been a year and a half since I last posted to my blog. I remember the last time I sat down to write...nothing. I had nothing. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what was blocking me from writing or sharing but something just didn't feel right. I've spent the past hour reading over my old blog posts. I only have one word ~ thankful ~ I am so thankful I took the time to write the stories and post the pictures. You can bet that most, if not all, of those stories would have been long forgotten had they not been documented on this blog. I will admit one of the hurdles I've faced is that my kids are growing up. I'm aware that they might not appreciate me sharing all the funny (or not so funny) things they do on a daily basis. I'm aware that there must be a shift in my writing; a shift from my writing about the things they do to writing about my perspective as a mom. I will still try to get permission to share some things, especially the funny stuff because in the end that's what I really want to remember. I want to look back and be able to laugh at the funny things we say and do around here.

I also want to use my little corner of the web to share more of my memory keeping. Scrapbooking has been a huge part of my life for the past 18 years I just haven't found a way to really share my pages. I was a paper scrapper for 11 years before I switched to digital. Learning how to use Photoshop has been a very slow process and that's been fine. When I learn something new, especially computer related stuff, I have to really soak it in. When I sit down at my computer and learn something new I feel a serious rush of adrenaline ~ it's pretty awesome! It's exciting for me to know that no matter how old I get I will always be excited to learn something new.

 
I created this page using a Jenn Lindsey template that was in one of The Daily Digi monthly kits. I also used the Happy Day kit by Blagovesta. You can find her over at Scrapbook Graphics. I love her designs!

Oh and not that you would look that closely but we've been in the middle of a little remodel around here for the past forever which would explain why the counter and wall is covered with brown paper and masking tape. I can't wait to share the before and after pics of that little project!

Have a fabulous day!