Benannamoon: The Album

When I was seven, our neighbors gave my sister and me a disposable camera and a photo album for Christmas. The album was high class for the time - ALBUM was embossed in gold across the faux leather cover and it had the peel and stick pages that never stick once you peel the plastic back five years later.

I documented my seven-year-old adventures (which all took place at the neighbors' house with their dogs), and then arranged them lovingly in that album. Along with a paper snowflake because I made it around the same time and the logical place to put it was in a photo album. Obviously.

Let's just say that photo albums have come a long way from the peel and stick days.

I love getting pictures off my computer and on to a printed page that I can view without having to dig through a folder and wait for all the little thumbnails to load. I love being able to touch them, run my fingers over the smooth surface of the page and hug the memories close to my heart. When friends come over, it is so much more fabulous to have them pass around a book that tells the story of a day or trip than to have everyone huddle around my tiny laptop screen to watch the digital versions whiz past and fade back into my harddrive's black hole.

For our honeymoon photos, I decided to try out Artifact Uprising. They are a new, eco-friendly, accessible-to-all photo book company based out of Colorado. Their books on the website had a modern film vibe, so I opted to check it out for our honeymoon story book. It turned out BEAUTIFUL.

I love magazines, so I decided to try a softcover book. That the photos looked so vibrant on a matte recycled paper was the most pleasant surprise. I love, love, love having photos of paradise sitting on my coffee table to reminisce over every day...especially now that the weather here is so cold and dreary.

In an album, I love a generous use of white space. It makes everything look more luxurious. The online design software gave a lot of options and definitely made good use of white space on each page. The pages crease to the center of the spine like a well-loved book, which lends the album a timeless elegance.

It warms my heart to have printed copies of our first trip as husband and wife to hold in my hands. Putting my photos in a book was the perfect way to tell and share our adventure and I couldn't be more pleased with the way it turned out.