Your Story Grad Book

My niece, Whitney, graduated in June this year!  It's pretty cool, because she actually graduated a year early.  My husband, Chris, was asked to photograph her for her Senior Pictures.  And I have to say he did an amazing job -- so much, in fact, that one of her friends saw her Senior pictures on Facebook and asked her own professional photographer to do the same shots!  Coming up to graduation, my sister asked me if I would do a Memory book for Whit, like I did for Nathan.  The work I put in to Nathan's book was extensive and specific, and time was an issue. So I suggested we do a smaller scale version as a Grad Book, and had my sister gather digital copies of letters & pictures and send them my way.  I was thinking there wouldn't be much for me to do, except print the digital copies and bind the book.  What was I thinking?? 

Although I'm not a perfect crafter, I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to what is going through my mind.  It almost never turns out to be what's floating around in my head, but I just can't help giving it a good try.  At any rate, my sister sent a few pictures and letters my way but of course I just had to expand on it.  So, I decided to spend time digging through old pictures to assemble them & the letters into a digital program.  Once I completed the layouts, I printed them onto 48lb Matte Brochure paper, which took the ink well and is sturdy enough to hold up with continued usage.  After the title page, I started with a photo collage of her through the years.  Then I added pictures & personal letters from various relatives, and finalized with a collage of her Senior Pictures.  On one of the pages I scanned a couple of items I made with my Cricut using the Tinkerbell cart.  I made them quite large, but scanned them quite small -- "Tink" & Tinkerbell with her hands on her hips...my dad used to call Whitney Tink...I'm just glad I was able to add them into the layouts since it was for a digital book.  I added Family/Friends pages with quotes on them for people to write notes to her at her Open House, and added a picture & sticker quote to the inside of the back page.  For the front cover I used photo corners and added a picture with a piece of acetate to cover it, and hand wrote "Whitney" and stamped a Grad hat & 2010 with VersaMark before carefully embossing with clear embossing powder.  You can't see it as well in the pictures but it turned out very nicely.  On the back of the book I did an embossing technique in gold where I stamped into it, "LoveLee Notes, by Lisa Sackett". 

Overall, for my first attempt at using my Your Story, it turned out great.  When I assembled the pages into the book I made sure they were pressed down into the spine and even.  I lightly pressed the book into the hot binding element of the Your Story machine and when it was done I set it into the cooling rack.  I left it overnight to cool (though it doesn't take that long, I just thought it best to do it at night so I couldn't mess with it while it was cooling).  In the morning it was bound securely and ready to mail!  Oh...I must say...I did not do any of the heat embossing on the front/back covers until AFTER the book had been bound and cooled.

One thing I decided to do (after the fact) is add a pocket to the back page (using foam adhesive to give it extra depth) for her to add any handwritten letters and such that didn't make it into the book, or that were scanned in, so she could save them. I think next time I make a digital book like this, I won't try to do it in a day, as I did this one. But I'm happy with the results, and more importantly...Whitney loved it!

Happy Crafting!  Lisa