Earlier this month I decided to take a break from creating pages for my 2013 photobook (I've finished the first five months of the year so far) and tackle another project on my to do list, namely remaking my 2010 photobook. Even though I spent a lot of time working on the original version and it certainly wasn't cheap, I wasn't at all happy with it anymore. It was the first book I made and it's definitely been a learning process... I knew next to nothing about photo editing back then and many of the photos from that year were taken with my old camera and phone which made the quality pretty bad. Also, the spine was white and my other 3 photobooks have grey covers.
As you might recall I had my 2009 book (which I actually created after the 2010 one) reprinted last year in Blurb's 7x7 small square format. I found it too small and intended to have the new version of the 2010 book printed in my usual 12x12 format, but since my 2010 photos were of such low resolution I went for the 7x7 format for the new 2010 book after all. This time I made each spread with a photo that fills the entire left page, and I hope that will make it feel less small. I wish Blurb offered 8x8 books like most other vendors, but as it is I prefer to stick to Blurb so my books look alike rather than try another vendor.
You can preview the book here. I used the Curated template series from Paislee Press. This was my first time using the same series of templates for an entire book, and it made the process so much quicker. It only took me about a week to finish the entire book and it's 92 pages so about 30 pages longer than the original. The fact that I'd already made the selection of photos once also helped - I often find that simply selecting which photos to include takes the longest time. It was quite fascinating to look through the 2010 photos again and see how far I've come when it comes to photography as well. I literally knew nothing back then!
I like the cohesive look of the Curated templates and now when I look at the 2013 pages I've created so far I feel like my regular templates and myriad of backgrounds seem rather messy... However, that is the style I've grown to love so I am sure I will be fine with it once I start working on the 2013 book again. Working in the 12x12 format leaves more room to be flexible too. In any case, since I've finished about a third of the 2013 book there's no way I'll be starting over now!
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