ZoomAlbum Crazy

Okay, so I know I mentioned this before, but my friend Mary gave me two packages of ZoomAlbum materials while I was away a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t had time to even download the software, much less take a really good look at how it worked. That is, not until tonight. Terry had a work dinner to attend, so I was home by my little lonesome and my crafty self was bored.

So, I sat down, downloaded the software, installed it and started thinking of what albums I could put together. Mary’s suggestion was that I make one of Phoebe and I thought that was a good idea, so that’s where I started. I had two different ZoomAlbum packages, one with preassembled, solid-colored covers and one with printable covers. Well, I wasn’t feeling nearly confident enough to try the printable covers out of the gate, so I went with a yellow colored cover. I chose 12 photos of Phoebe from the past 6 or more years and decided on the order in which I wanted them to be displayed. It was as simple as opening the folder inside of the software, choosing from the thumbnails displayed and dragging and dropping each desired thumbnail into one of the twelve available slots. Then I played around with each photo a bit to get the sizing correct (just a slide bar to zoom in and out) and to drag the photo so that it was centered in just the right spot on the page. Then, I popped in a sheet of legal sized paper and printed the layout to get a preview of how it would look. Not bad, so I went ahead, slipped the pre-punched photo paper into the printer and printed the sheet of pictures. Now, in order to get an accordion booklet out of a sheet of photo paper slightly larger than a regular piece of letter paper, there’s some flipping of the photos that has to happen. You get three rows of photos and the second row is flipped in the opposite direction. But, you know what? You don’t have to worry about that, the software does it for you! Just drag and drop your photos into position, size them, add text if you want and print.

Now comes the slightly tricky part. Once the ink has dried (and this happened amazingly fast, despite the high humidity outside), you split apart the rows, up to a certain point, and then start folding backwards and forwards. It tells you what to do where on the back of the photo sheet, so don’t panic. And if you’re really a perfectionist, like I am, then take a couple of looks at the movie they’ve made of putting a ZoomAlbum together. You can find it here on their site. Then, you pull off the backing sheet off of the in-between pages (leave it on the front and back of the album for now) and adhere everything together (again, view the video and you’ll feel much better about this). Then, pull off the front and back protective sheets and slap it into the cover. Okay, you don’t just slap it in there, but it’s nearly that easy. Watch the video and see for yourself. And that quickly, I had a little 3″ square photo album of Phoebe pics, perfect for carrying in my purse or taking in to work as a brag book.

I went off and did some other chores for a while, but then I got the idea for another album, one with pictures from Terry’s dad’s wedding last July. And this time, I decided I would find a good picture to make a photo cover for it, as well. Yes, the craftiness just jumped up a notch there. I followed the same procedures as I did for the Phoebe album, but then it was time to do the cover. Don’t worry, they have a video for this, too. And I watched it several times before I even chose my photo because I was so nervous about it. It turns out, it really is as easy as making the album itself was. I chose and photo that would wrap around the cover nicely, front and back. This is important because you can just pick any photo and expect it to look as good as you want it to. So, I needed to put a little thought into this. With the perfect photo found, I had to pull it into Photoshop and flip it so that the right people were on the front of the cover (namely Terry’s dad and his lovely bride). Then, it was the same as working with the photos for the album. Open the folder, drag and drop the thumbnail, mess with the size and placement, pop in a test sheet, print, inspect, pop in the real photo cover sheet and print. Again, the ink dried incredibly fast (I usually have to wait overnight before handling photos) and I was able to work with the cover almost right away. I won’t bore you with more details, but if you follow the video, you won’t have any problems. This time, I came out of it with a really nifty-looking album. Printing your own cover really makes all of the difference in the neato factor, in my opinion. Of course, you could always buy the solid-colored covers and attach and embellish a small photo for the front, as well. Either way, it looks like you put a lot more effort into it than is actually required.

All in all, I’m quite proud of myself and quite impressed with the product. Now, if only they could apply this technology to slightly larger albums, I’d be set. After all, I only have so much room in my purse. Of course, there are other people’s purses to fill, as well. And these would make nice little additions to a coffee or end table, mantle, entertainment center, whatever. Just think, you could make little albums of your stitching to take with you to get-togethers! I’m already thinking up more album ideas and I only have enough materials to make two more. Guess I’ll be buying refills at some point in the future. 😉