vacation |

A few months ago I posted about the project that I was working on with the photos from mine and William’s trip to London with my parents. I didn’t want to print out a hundred pictures individually because it just seems wasteful. That said, I am very much a “tangible” person so I wanted to do something with the pictures other than have them sit in an album on Flickr and in my iPhoto. So, I am creating a photo book using iPhoto that will be bound with a hardback cover and so I’ll have all my photos in one place that I can show off whenever I like! Read more about my project here.

I also have commissioned my in house artist, Mr. Fancy Pants, to design a cover for the front of the book. He is almost done with the finished product! How talented is he?!

: This is the cover for the London photo book designed by Mr. Fancy Pants

This is way past the artistic ability that I have housed in my little brain so we’ll give credit where credit is due (ahem Mr. Fancy Pants), but the inspiration and concept behind his drawing was from one of his favorite illustrators M.Sasek and his book This is London.

This is London illustrated by M. Sasek

Miroslav Sasek was the Czech artist, illustrator and author of the This Is series of children’s books (which are amazing by the way). We have a little collection of these books and will always welcome more. They are beautiful to look at and are great inspiration for William.

This is London is the second This Is book and undoubtedly one of the best. Sasek concentrates on the things he likes best: people, costume, transport and local details that somehow come together to form a whole impression of the city that still seems quite accurate today. Here are some other covers from his collection that are equally as beautiful.

This is Edinburgh illustrated by M. Sasek

This is Venice illustrated by M. Sasek

This is Texas illustrated by M. Sasek

So, William and I traveled to London, England with my family last week for a little family vacation. We had such a good time! We spent 4 days in the city and spend two days traveling around. We visited Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Bath, Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Cotswolds, and Oxford. It was a jam-packed trip full of sight-seeing and lots of history (which my dad and I particularly enjoy).

Back in the day, before digital cameras, I took just as many pictures as I do now with my handy dandy PowerShot. The difference being I used to print out all of my millions of pictures and they now sit, sadly collecting dust, in photo boxes and photo albums, books, and scrapbooks in my closet at my parent’s house. Ever since we got married, I have broken my need to have a physical copy of each picture I take–other than our wedding photos and the occasional picture that I print to hang or display in our apartment. I am glad that I am not printing pictures just for the sake of printing them (I’m sure Walgreen’s greatly misses me in the photo department) though I do miss having them to look at other than on my computer screen.

So, when I got home and began uploading my 393 photos that I took during our vacation, I remembered reading about the photo books that you could make using iPhoto. I did a little research on it and decided it was the perfect solution! You can pick your design template and then you just start adding photos! I am trying to do ours in order of our week so that I can remember our trip better. Here are some screenshots of how the design is coming:

Day 1: These photos are from the first day of our trip. I love this layout and the captions on the right page.

Here's a spread with a full page picture and a page with four pictures. The pages in the book itself will be around 8.5 x 11" so you can judge the size of pictures we'll get with that.

Day 2: Pictures of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Side note, that is my new hat...and I love it!

Here is what the photo book will look like when it’s printed:

http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/print-products.html

Several of the options that are listed on the website I didn’t have the option to use because I don’t have the most current version of iLife. (trying to get that update–side note). That said, I picked the ‘Modern Lines’ theme for our book. On the inside of the book there are several opening pages that I am writing little memories about our trip and a little ‘table of contents/outline’ of our trip. Shh…I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am hoping that if I am really really sweet, William will draw something really great for the front cover. Here is what we’re working on right now.

London famous buildings/skyline:

But hand-drawn in Mr. Fancy Pants style like he did for the Picture Book Report project he’s working with (See Big Ben and the Tower Bridge already drawn below):

I am really warming to this idea for our photos. What a great way to have a physical product of our pictures/memories without taking up a whole lot of space! AND it’ll be a new addition to our bookshelves!

You can see the rest of our photos from our amazing trip here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsfancypantz/sets/72157624294566921/