Updating school albums for another year

Holy krakatoa! Only one more slot for his 6th grade year and this boy's elementary experience is history. Where does the time go?

With Cole's final day of 5th grade being this week, I decided to bust out the old school templates and get busy documenting his 5th grade year.

Let me just start by saying I love this album concept. I wish I could say I invented the idea, but no, that honor goes to my good friend and scrapbooking mentor Stacy Julian, who came up with the School of Life concept in her book, Simple Scrapbooks. I loved the idea of using just a handful of pages to capture the highlights of the year.

I approach this project by opening up iPhoto, gathering a few key photos from each month of the school year, and then plugging them into the the template. The photos don't have to be directly related to school activities. They're just to provide a snapshot of Cole's life in the 5th grade. I include sports stuff and there is a pocket page for report cards and any other memorabilia from the school year.

It took me an hour and a half to crank out the following pages.

I will upload these pages to an online printer (I use ScrapbookPictures.com) and then they'll get tucked safely into Cole's "It's Elementary" album.

The pocket page looks like this:

Switching over to a digital version of Cole's album has really streamlined the process for me.

If you'd like to read my original post where I outline this concept in more detail, and show you the hybrid approach I used for Aidan's album, click here.

Until then, here's to getting the school year scrapped before the new one begins!

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SUPPLIES:  8.5 x 11 School Album Set (Cathy Zielske) • Just Linens No. 4 (Michelle Martin) • Krafty No. 7 Paper Pack, Notebook Paper Pack (Katie Pertiet) • Avenir font • brads (American Crafts)

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My school templates album sets are available in both 8.5 x 11 and 12 x 12.

I also have an add-on word pack with PNG and ABR files to cover 7th through 12th grade, as well as overseas and UK school titles.