Improving our Photo Album

Last week my youngest daughter loaned me her laminating machine so that I could begin creating my own photo albums to take to any Miniature Shows that I sell at.  I have decided that a regular album doesn't work anymore and the pictures are not displayed to their best advantage.
I have never used a laminator before and am really enjoying the results I am seeing. For those who haven't used one either, the sheets are slightly opaque as seen at the top of the first photo, then turn very clear once they have passed through the laminator. I purchased sheets large enough to laminate 2 sets of photos on each page. 
​To further make my albums more user friendly, I have made up a description card for each page with details about each rug. 

After 3 days of printing out my own photos, description cards and laminating all, I am finally done laminating the main pages. In total, I laminated 111 pages of photos with 2 photos per page. That is a lot of patterns!

Next, I need to create covers for the albums and cut each page down to a better size. I am also debating whether to use clear acrylic sheets for the back of the albums or another laminated page. I will have to decide soon!

I intend to have separate albums for each group of sizes. For example: 4" x 6" rugs, 5" x 7" rugs, etc, similar to the categories in our shop.  I am also toying with the idea of creating tabs to separate each style of rug within the album, but am not sure that will work out for me yet. 

Yesterday was Day 4 working on this project. Little did I know it would take so long, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. I have set up my cutting mat with guidelines for cutting out the pages so that they all turn out the same size.

​I was able to cut out 1/2 of the pages in the afternoon and will cut out the rest today.  As I cut them out, I arranged them in order of size. Below shows some of the pages trimmed and sorted.

Today, I will re-set my guidelines on my cutting mat to trim the other half of the photos. I need to do this because the other half have much more space around the photo that needs to be trimmed off. Once I get new guidelines set, I should be able to finish the trimming today.

This has turned out to be a great project and I am very much enjoying the planning and execution of it. I think having different albums will give more people a chance to properly browse our patterns instead of feeling that they are taking too long. One album limits the amount of time people can browse because they feel they are holding others back from viewing the patterns. I could not find store-bought albums that would allow me to include everything I wanted, so, being the craft-minded person that I am, I am creating my own. Such fun!!