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Foto Fridays: Extending the Vacation Through Photography – Scrapbooking

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If you’re reading this blog, it’s probably pretty safe to say that you inundate your life with all things Disney. From news & rumor discussion forums about the parks, to Twitter “meets” to watch Disney movies with fellow fans, to websites dedicated to showing people how to lead a Disney Driven Life, the Mouse manages to invade our lives on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

My wife and I have found more ways to surround ourselves with Disney than we can even remember.  Seriously.  However, on a recent episode of BetaMouse, when Henry Work made a sarcastic remark about scrap-booking, he sparked my memory regarding one of the ways that I used to get a dose of Disney in my daily life, and in so doing, he challenged me to demonstrate just how cool/hip/fun/”BetaMouse” scrap-booking can be. Challenge accepted.

That’s right, I was once a scrap-booker. It was the wild and loose spring of 2008, and everyone was experimenting. I had resolved to make a photo book documenting our August and Christmas trips from 2007, and I found that all of the pre-fabricated designs on the various photo book sites were lousy. I discovered an option on one of these sites to use a full page image per page, and the light went off that I could design my own layout, save it as an image, and viola, have my own designs. I had never used Photoshop prior to this, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I could have simply aborted the digital photo book idea and made conventional scrap-books, but my misguided sense of masculinity wouldn’t allow for that. At least digitial photo book creation (I refused to call it scrap-booking) seemed more tech-savvy and manly than regular scrap-booking. Plus, in my experience with traditional scrap-booking, it always made a mess and was expensive, and I hate expensive things and messes, so digital scrap-booking, even if it would prove more difficult, was the clear choice for me.

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop (CS3 was the version I used), it has somewhat of a learning curve. However, I was persistent, and through video and written tutorials, along with my own inquisitiveness, I managed to create my first layout. It only took me 4 hours to create.

Tomorrowland layoutAbove is the first layout I made.  Relatively simple.  I cannot believe it took four hours to make!

MGM Layout 1

The process became significantly less time consuming as I learned the ropes, and when I was finally done with the project, it was only taking me around twenty to thirty minutes per page. Not bad, given that it was something that I enjoyed. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel if you decide to scrapbook, here are some tips concerning ‘mistakes’ I made.

Epcot Title Page

Contemporary & Poly at Christmas

If using Photoshop, use Actions. Actions allow you to record a series of commands that you make within Photoshop (similar to macros in other programs). You can then apply the Action to other objects/images after recording the first action, rather than repeating the repetitive process for each image/object. For scrap-booking, I found this especially helpful for the addition of borders, drop shadows, and other enhancements to photos themselves within a layout.

Osborne Lights

Magic Kingdom Christmas 1

For those planning on turning these layouts into a photo book, find a template with guidelines on the photo book producer’s website. If there isn’t a template, find the dimensions (gutter, etc.) and add these guidelines in Photoshop (or whatever program you use). Trust me, you don’t want to rearrange a layout because the page-preview on the photo book website indicates one of your pages will be cropped such that it features “pcot” rather than “Epcot.”

Epcot Christmas Layout

Country Bear Christmas Layout

Flickr and Google images can be great resources for backgrounds, but searching these sites for high resolution backgrounds will be time consuming. Take your own background photographs at the parks. The Tower of Terror bell hops may give you some weird looks for taking close-up photos of a wall, but it’s a lot less time consuming (and more authentic!) than finding something that “sort of” fits your theme online.

Tower of Terror Layout

Epcot Title Page

Epcot World Showcase 2

Don’t do all of the work yourself. There are a number of websites that offer free (or paid) scrapbook embellishments. Use them. I found myself making far too many of my own, and this was time-consuming. For some pages, there was no way around this. There simply were no logos for certain Disney resorts, etc., that I could find online, so I had to carefully extract them from literature I found. Another helpful resource that will add a little zest to your layouts is MickeyAvenue.com. Mickey Avenue has countless fonts used at Walt Disney World.

Epcot Christmas World Showcase Luggage

Figment Layout

Save tickets, maps, paper menus, hard ticket wristbands, and anything else that might look cool in the scrapbook, and scan it when you return home. These items bring a nice touch to your pages, and provide a nice change of pace from the typical purely-photo layouts. After all, back in the ‘old days’ when scrap-booking was done with paper and scissors, these type of things were common staples of a good scrapbook.

Pirate & Princess Party Layout

Typhoon Lagoon Layout

The end result was really cool, but that wasn’t the big draw for me. The draw was creating something I thought to be neat, and in so doing, extending our Disney vacation a bit further. I think this process of “extending the trip” is something we all do, and is really quite fun. It provides a more gentle transition back to reality. Rather than simply sinking into the depths of depression (kidding) after the conclusion of a Disney trip, we have something to cushion the blow. For some of us, this is photography-related. For others, it’s a support group via Twitter. Whatever it may be, for those of us, like myself, who are truly obsessed with the Mouse, it’s imperative.

I have since ceased scrap-booking. Not because I don’t like it, but because other commitments and interests have displaced it. It was something that I did to preserve our memories, but also to “extend the trip,” and now I extend the trip in other ways. Through editing images, preparing extremely long trip reports, and even writing this weekly blog, I’ve found that I have plenty of Disney in my daily life. While I could probably find the time to make these photo book layouts, too, I think that would be pushing it–it’s good to have some balance.

For those who have an interest in creating similar photo book pages, I encourage you to give it a try. You certainly don’t have to use Photoshop (there are a number of paid and free alternatives, although I can only vouch for the wonderful powers of Photoshop), and you don’t have to start with anything complicated. There are also many online resources, and places to share your creations, so give it a try!  You can check out my other Disney photo book pages here.  If you need any embellishments, Disney logos, or borders, feel free to send me an email: tom@touringplans.com

How do you extend your Disney vacations? Do you scrapbook? Have you ever created photo book layouts? Do you have an interest in creating any now? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Tom Bricker

Tom is an amateur Walt Disney World photographer. He recently married his princess, Sarah, to whom he became engaged at WDW on the beach of the Polynesian Resort in 2007. Tom and Sarah have a miniature dachshund named Walter E. Dogsney and a yellow cat named Yossarian the Cat. Together, Sarah and Tom run the website http://DisneyTouristBlog.com. Tom's photography can be found on his Flickr page (www.flickr.com/tombricker) and he can be contacted via Twitter (@wdwfigment) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/wdwfigment).

15 thoughts on “Foto Fridays: Extending the Vacation Through Photography – Scrapbooking

  • Your layouts look great! I am a paper scrapbook person. But I have a whole routine when returning from the parks for my photos. First we travel as a large group, so I organize my mom’s, sister-in-law’s and my photos into order. Then, I order my favorite photos and put them in a photo album. This way I have everyone’s best shots in one place. Then, I make video montagesof out trip. They are great to watch throughout the year, especially for the kids when we watch ones from when they were babies. Finally, when I have time I create scrapbooks of each trip. I actually have one for each trip, and then on scrapbook, that is a two page spread of each of our trips since 1986, when my parents took my brother and I for our first trip. With all these Disney projects, I can live Disney magic everyday between one trip and the next!

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  • I’m all about scrapbooking and Disney! So much so I made a website about it! LOL

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  • Disney is the reason I started scrapbooking. We would buy the 5×7 or 8×10 ride photos and not have any place for them. So I started a scrapbook for those which lead then me wanting to scrap school photos and lots of other stuff. I’m still a traditional scrapper though, haven’t made it over to digital. But after seeing all these cool digital ones I may give it a shot.

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    • I know there are still a lot of people who scrap with paper, so you’re hardly the minority. Digital can be complicated and has a steep learning curve. It’s always nice to create something tangible, too!

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  • I am interested in knowing where you found the Disney’s four parks spelled out by the attractions in them. They look awesome.

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  • Great article. Thanks. I made one myself on my 2007 and 2008 trips and you’re right, it really smooths the way back to reality. And people prefer looking at a scrapbook that an album of 200 4’x6′.
    And by the way, it is “Voilà” in french… (I help you with your french, you help me with my english 🙂 )

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    • Voilà, eh? I try to keep the tops of my letters backwards-apostrophe free! 😉

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  • I’m a huge scrapbooker (is that a word????) and LOVE all the information you passed on today. Thanks a ton for the links and for the tips on photoshop. I have not used this yet, but I have friends who do for other reasons.

    I can’t wait to try this out on my recent Disney trip.

    Thanks!!!!

    Tami

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  • I scrapbook so I have an outlet to share my pics and to relive the Disney memories as I scrap & then later when I can look back at the pages. If I didn’t scrap, I’d be much better at posting my pics online & writing reports, though! 😉

    My digi Disney layouts:
    http://heatherw.com/other/gallery/v/other/scrapbook/digi/disney/

    My traditional Disney layouts:
    http://heatherw.com/other/gallery/v/other/scrapbook/dis07/

    Also, MouseScrappers.com is a great resource for Disney scrappers, especially digi scrappers.

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    • Very nice! MouseScrappers seems like a great resource–wish it existed/I knew about it when I did this!

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