The {Grad} Party Planning Committee on Picture Projects

**It is odd to think that the pictures we take (and have printed...) will be old someday. Like, really, really old. This line was written in a book that I am currently reading- the book is a long, fairly melancholy, well written book. The main character was reflecting on a time in his life when he was younger. He came across a photograph with him in it from his youth. The line in the book reads, 

¨As from all snapshots, longing and nostalgia emanate from this one: they are in the amateurish tilt of the picture and its yellowing hue and in the sense of springs gone forward, old shoe styles and hair-dos, rooftops that no longer exist, in that knowledge which is perhaps the camera’s single most poignant gift, of time past and irretrievable.¨ 

I find that sentence beautifully written and true, especially when I look at photographs of my parents when they were young.**

Oh, the photos of Alyssa I went through! High school graduation is nothing if but a chance to search in the recesses of the mind for remembrances of tiny hands held in ours as we walked, shared jokes, holidays celebrated, mundane rainy Monday afternoons, and whether we wanted them to or not, sometimes harsh memories rise to the surface, hopefully momentarily and hopefully overshadowed by the pleasant ones. If we’re lucky we have photos to look back on to assist in the looking back of a life from infancy to that symbol of adulthood: high school graduation. I am thankful for every picture that I took- display worthy or not- and even with the knowledge that sometimes photos conceal the tenor of the moment. 

I enjoyed my look back as I prepared photo items for Alyssa’s high school grad party. I hope that my love for her, pride for her character, and enjoyment of watching her grow up and into the lovely young woman that she is today was evident to Alyssa when she saw her photo displays for her grad party and is always evident when she looks through her senior photo mementos. 

Here is a round up of the products that I used to display and pay homage to Alyssa’s graduation milestone.

Slideshow- I used Canva to create the slideshow(s) that we displayed. One slideshow was not enough when there is a limit of 500 photos per slideshow! I made two slideshows. One with 500 photos and one with 450. It was pretty easy to use Canva and I would recommend it to anybody who wants to put together a slideshow. In researching what to use, I came across many products. Many of them seemed to seek companies as their target consumer. Canva seemed geared towards an individual. 

Tri-fold posters- We went to many grad parties prior to Alyssa’s. While none of the grad parties (that we went to this year) featured slideshows, they all had multiple photo staging sites in the form of tri fold posters (maybe that’s not the correct name for them but that is how I think of them...). They are fairly tall and hold numerous 4 x 6 photos. Even though we were doing a slideshow that would enable us to show many more pictures than two tri folds would show, both Alyssa and I liked the idea of having pictures that were physically affixed to a surface (as opposed to the transient nature of photos appearing on a slideshow) that guests could look at during the grad party. Alyssa did all of the work in creating one of the posters. She selected pictures from her phone from her high school years- photos of her and her friends, her boyfriend and even a few pictures of her with family made the poster cut- awww! 

We uploaded the photos that she wanted to use to Wal-mart’s website and then picked them up a couple of hours later. At .14 a print, the prints didn't break the bank and the quality seemed fine. (I use Wal-mart photo printing for all of my unimportant photo printing needs based on how reasonable the price is. By unimportant, I mean not something that I am going to frame or use as a gift for instance.)

I put the photos together for the other tri-fold. This was a great place to put baby photos and photos of Alyssa when she was a child (up through high school). I didn’t have to print any photos out for this; I used photos that I already had printed.

Senior picture photo album- I knew that I wanted a pretty and customized album in which to place Alyssa’s senior pictures. For that, I looked to Etsy, where numerous customized photo albums are available. I knew that I did not want the album that I bought for Abby’s senior pictures. While the album succeeded in being very pretty (I like the photo opening on the front cover) and had, what I thought was great character- this lovely vellum paper in between pages, the album was not something I would purchase again for a couple of reasons. That pretty vellum ended up getting bent quite a bit as people leafed through the book and ceased looking as lovely as it had when its shape was pristine. Also not really the album’s fault but, I had her photos printed in 5 x 7 sized print. That size was too small for the pages, not too small looking per se but rather, too small for me to afix to each page in a straight line. 

So based on what I didn’t like about Abby’s I knew what to look for in an album. I knew I wanted a smaller album. It also had to hold a certain number of pictures- I didn’t suppose that I would fine exactly what I was looking page wise but I wanted it to be close.

I purchased this album and couldn’t be more pleased! The seller from the shop, TheBlacksDesign answered all of my questions very timely. An album from this seller can be customized in numerous ways included personalization and size of the album. I liked the self adhesive nature of the pages quite a bit, too. With a traditional scrapbook design, for any photograph and any embellishments you add to the page, you must add adhesive and then buy and insert page protectors to go over the pages. I really liked how I could skip the adhesive and the protector was built into the page. One drawback of the page set up was it was nearly impossible to get the overlay to lie completely perfectly taut over the page. There were tiny pockets of raised space. However, I think (hope!) that was me being hyper critical. I’m not sure that most people would look that closely/ notice.

When we went to a grad party and saw a printed photobook of the senior’s senior photos, I questioned doing Alyssa’s book the way I did it with printed photos in an album. The photobook was printed professionally and obviously bound like a book. It looked great! I don’t, however, regret doing a traditional album. And, the thing is, I can easily and quickly create a photobook of her senior pictures since I have the JPEG files of them. I may give Alyssa the album that I made and then make a photobook for me. I don’t know but I like always having that option. I do love to flip through a photobook :). 

Here are a few photos of pages in the album

I didn’t have quotes or words on every page but I did on a few. The Bible verse, “Every good and perfect gift is from above” kept popping up in my head when I looked at Alyssa’s pictures so I decided to write it out. Speaking of writing it out, my penmanship is not my strongest suit nor is writing without slanting letters! I thought about printing out the words I wanted to use for a neater look but ultimately decided that my imperfect handwriting would suffice.

Inspo- A little more dramatic than the, “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take”  admonition...

Found a nice ocean quote for my ocean lover! 

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever- Jacques Cousteau

On the last page- not my two favorite CS Lewis quotes but good ones for the occasion, I thought. I think “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind” refers to heaven, not leaving high school but I used it anyway. 😆

I thought the second quote that I used was quite appropriate for the end of high school (or the end of any era). It says, “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”

Yes, my little Lyss- I noticed no difference in you from day to day but I woke up one day and you were all grown up. 💕 

Pictures printed for Alyssa’s senior picture photo album- I used Mpix for the photos that I placed in Alyssa’s senior album. The quality of Mpix’s print is second to none! I touched the prints many times as I changed my mind about what photo should go on which page. Touching a picture one hundred times did not result in the print looking like it had been handled a lot or even at all. The quality is just that good…I paid extra per print to get a special processing that gives the photos a slightly metallic look. I love it- it makes each print unique and special.