IMP Blog Team Melinda Staley | Week 2 Challenge – Album Covers
Hi everyone! Melinda here today to talk covers, as Meg’s Challenge for the Life Stories class this week is all about album covers.
Like I mentioned in my earlier blog post I’ve typically waited until the end of my Faves year projects to design my covers. No particular reason, it is just that I usually don’t get around to it until that empty spot in the online album project is staring at me. Let’s look at the albums up there in the first photo a little more closely.
When I was able to locate some information on my 2009 Photo album project (sometimes having been on Facebook forever has its advantages), I discovered that there were two album covers for that year. One I had made at the beginning of the year, and one that I did at the end because I had decided the first didn’t match the overall feel of the album. The first one had lots of textured real elements and just didn’t seem to go with all of the very clean, white-space pages inside the album. So I did a total rework and came up with the cover and cover page shown above.
The album cover features a square grid design embellished with colorful papers, a mix of alpha numbers for the year, and few scattered buttons and charms on top, with a simple doodle border. A colorful rainbow paper on the spine finishes off the fun vibe. The Inside cover has a repeat of the same border, a masked photo and a couple pieces of wordart that frame the photo.
The template I used for the cover was made by Wendyzine, and the kit I used was Scrapping & Snapping by TheDailyDigi. Both are retired.
The outside covers of both of my 2015 and 2017 albums were made using the same template that came as part of the Nettio Designs 2015 Faves Project album template. It was a very basic template with a central square area featuring the word FAVES and the year. I dressed up and switched out the parts of the template with things from the kits that I chose to work with for that year.
For the inside covers I continued in the same vein using the same kit and a central square design with a framed photo of myself that I embellished. Pretty quick and simple design.
I don’t think anyone pulling these off of my shelf to look at them would realize, or even think initially, that the covers of these two albums began with the same template.
When 2018 came around and I needed a cover for that album, I had found the free year cover templates that Scrapping With Liz was giving away on her blog. The large numbers that are cut-up and pieced back together are a cute and eye-catching design. The inside cover is a template made by Mommyish – again featuring a central square design with a photo of myself (I’m seeing a trend here LOL!).
For 2019 I used Scrapping with Liz’s free cover template and the inside cover page was made with a free blog challenge template from Pink Reptile Designs.
Scrapping With Liz still has these cover templates available for free on her blog, so if you are looking for a quick cover for this year or any of the years 2016-2022, you can still grab them.
2022: http://www.scrappingwithliz.com/2022/01/2022-cover-page.html
2021: http://www.scrappingwithliz.com/2020/12/2021-cover-template-freebie.html
There is a set of links to the previous year cover pages still available in this 2021 cover post!
Detailed credits for the 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019 covers and inside cover pages can be seen at my IMP Life Stories 2022 Pinterest Board.
These are my takeaway points from looking at my past yearly album covers:
1 – I always have the year as the prominent design on the album cover.
2 – Inside cover pages have the year and a picture of myself, since I’m the main subject of the album’s contents.
3 – Don’t reinvent the wheel if you need a quick idea to just get it done. Reuse a template from a previous year you liked. I promise most people aren’t going to notice 😉
4 – If you get to the end of the year and decide you don’t like the cover you made to start for some reason, it is totally OK to redo it. Be happy with your choices.