Laura Vegas

"What do you do with the layouts you make of your daycare kids?". That's a question that I've been asked a lot over the years. And my answer has always been the same. I keep the layouts. Sure, I show them off to the parents. But they are layouts with photos that I've taken, stories and/or journaling about what happens when these kids are with me, and they are memories of the time that I spend with these kids. I hope this doesn't sound too selfish, but they are MY memories of MY days with them.

I was searching my blog for something last week and came across this photo from many years ago. At that time, I had accumulated 5 full albums of layouts about my daycare kids from over the years. I believe shortly after this was when I sorted through the layouts and did actually give some away to a handful of the parents. Just a little narrowing down, you could say.

{consider yourself warned: these are ALL cell phone camera pics, and I'm not lucky enough to have a really nice cell phone}

As of two weekends ago, this was what my collection of daycare layouts looked like. I still only had 5 full 12×12 albums, although there were some being stored in a 6th album as well (and notice I had changed my album style at some point). I also had 2 full 9×9 albums, since several years ago I was scrapping a ton of layouts in that size.

This was the massive pile of layouts that I sorted out and put away in albums two weekend ago. There were close to 80 layouts in that pile. I don't scrap the daycare kids as much as I used to, for a few reasons, but I did have about 10-15 layouts in there to add to the daycare albums. And they wouldn't fit. Which got me thinking once again about an idea I had the last time I was putting layouts away, earlier this year.

A while back, I pondered the idea of taking all of those layouts and turning them into a digital book. And then passing the layouts themselves along to any parents that I'm still in touch with. I felt like it was a huge decision. Having pictures of layouts in a book is kind of like seeing layouts online, on blogs, or eve in magazines. It's cool. But it's nothing like seeing layouts in person, where you can appreciate the details, layers, textures, etc. 

But at the same time, I was thinking of the space these albums are taking on my shelves. Have I mentioned that I have over 60 albums??? It's one thing to have that many albums of my own family. But when I think about having 7 albums of just the daycare kids, I have to wonder how important they'll be 10 years from now, 20 years from now. When I think about it like that, I actually like the idea of having one compact book that features all of the layouts in one spot.

I have done quite a few books thru Shutterfly and Blurb, and love them all.

I've done several blog books, which is basically turning an entire years worth of blog posts (text and photos) into a nice compact book (SEEN HERE).

Three different years, I created a photo book of just the daycare kids, summing up their year in just a few photos of each child (usually done using a free photo book code, and one of them can be SEEN HERE).

And I also created a book for a daycare girlie that had been with me for 3.5 years, and included tons of photos along with all the layouts I've created of her (SEEN HERE).

Once I made the decision to actually do this, I started by pulling layouts out of their albums. I made it through about 2 albums before I became completely overwhelmed and thought about turning back. Luckily, that passed and I continued on. I already had all of my layouts organized by child (or family, if I had watched siblings) within the albums, so it was easy to pull out each child/family and make a pile for each. I worked with everything from 2001-2011. It was a good cut off point, since the kids that have been here the last 2 years are still super current in our life.

I then took photos of each and every layout. I actually have photos of all of my layouts, but they're resized for the blog, and for the books you need the massively huge image files. I would take each set of layouts, one child/family at a time, and photograph the layouts in order. I didn't stress too much about this part, as I only took about 3-4 shots of each layout (normally, when I photograph layouts I take at leat 10-12 photos). Then I would move on to the next child/family.

I would upload them to my laptop in batches, pick the best shot of each layout and then do some very quick editing. Most of them just needed a little lightening up, and maybe a slight color adjustment. I cropped them all, sharpened, and saved. I created a folder for each child/family, so I could keep them all seperate and easier to work with.

I knew I would use Blurb to create my book. It's easy to use, and the prices are really reasonable. I also knew that I wanted to make a 12×12" book, so that the layouts were just like their original size (instead of going with a 7×7" book, as I have used before). I kept things super simple, with one layout on each page, leaving a page inbetween each child/family to use as a divider. And since I named my images with the child/family name + the number for what order they went in, it took me NO time at all to load all of the images into the book in perfect order.

For the divider pages, I basically created a digital title page in Photoshop, that I could then upload as an image. I have a HUGE collection of digital products, so I just pulled in some patterned papers, a notebook page (in several colors), some tapes (in several colors), and staples. Once I had the page set up, it was super easy to just swap out the elements to match whoever the page was for. The beauty of digital!

 

The longest and hardest part of this project was trying to upload the finished book for ordering. It didn't help that I was trying to get in on an awesome sale, which apparently a TON of other people were trying to get in on as well. They actually extended the sale a day, because so many weren't able to upload their books.

After a lot of persistance on my part, and some magic on Blurb's part, I finally got my book all uploaded an ordered. Soon, I will have a 163 page 12×12" hardbound book in my hands, that won't take up much space on my shelves.

I did end up with a pile of layouts that I can't part with. A lot of those are layouts that include a bunch of the kids together, as I have created a lot of those over the years expressing how much they mean to me. I'm keeping layouts that included my girls, as a lot of the previous kids became their best friends. I'm keeping the layouts that document my typical work day, and the things we do here together. But any layouts that were strickly about the individual kids are being passed along to parents that I'm still in touch with (which is about 70%).

It gave me a good reason to use up some really old post bound albums that have been taking up space on my shelves. I made up albums for each child/family that had a good amount of layouts. A few are just in a bag to pass along. And for those that I'm not in touch with anymore? I'm not sure you want to hear what I did with those layouts. Are you sitting down? I threw them away. Yes, I know that's pretty drastic. But I was 100% fine with it, and had no regrets after doing it. 

I love creating layouts and cards, and doing everyday scrapping. But honestly, I love when I have some free time from assignments to work on fun projects like this. I feel like I accomplished something big, and it feels really, really good.