Contacting Loved Ones

• First, write a letter explaining that you are making an album for a person and you want their help by writing a letter and sending photos. Request that they send them back within a month. Click HERE for an example letter. Print your letter out on regular letter paper and put it in the mailer
  
• Second, make a list of names of people who are special to the person. Try to think of 10 to 20 names. Locate their addresses and phone numbers.
• Third, address half the address labels with the addresses of the people you are sending the letters to as the receivers. Then stick those address labels on the front of the mailers. Now address the other half of the address labels with your name as the receiver. Put these labels in the mailers for the person to use to send the letter and photos back to you.
• Fourth, make a photo protector using acid free paper. Just fold an 8x10 sheet of acid free paper in half and seal 3 sides with adhesive. Then, use a pen to label it with the word "For Photos". If you have acid free bags, you could use those in place of the paper. Put the photo protector in the mailer
• Fifth, put a sheet of lined acid free paper in the mailer for the person to use to write their letter/story.
• Sixth, check that everything is in each mailer:
  _Letter describing what you want them to do
  _Return Address Label
  _Photo protector
  _Acid Free Lined Paper
• Seal and mail the mailers. It should cost approximately $1.00 per mailer for most destinations.

Do this about 6 weeks in advanced.
Make sure you have all the supplies you will need on hand. The most important item in your supplies is your album.

Planning Pages

Do this about 6 weeks in advanced.

Organize the album chronologically – This is a great heritage type album. Start with the person’s birth and go through the major milestones in their life. The letters from loved ones would be dispersed chronologically. For example, put a letter from the person’s mother near the birth pages. Put a letter from the person’s sibling near the growing years pages. Put a letter from the person’s best friend near high school or college pages. Put a letter from the person’s children near their children’s birth pages. Put a letter from the person’s current friends near current pages, and so on. This works well if you have a lot of photos that can be used to fill in the gaps.

• Use one type of paper throughout the album to maintain consistency and to make planning and creating pages faster. For instance, I used Anna Griffin paper to highlight my photos on each page. I put the paper behind photos, over the whole page, and/or I cut out letters from that paper to make titles.
  
• To make things easier and go faster, do not crop many of the photos and the photos you do choose to crop, just crop them into squares. This makes for a nice, clean, sophisticated look. Then double mat each photo with a piece of solid paper first and then printed paper

Begin this about 4 weeks in advance.

With your letters, photos, and supplies sorted and organized, you are ready to create your album. Use the tips above and your imagination to create the pages. Remember, this is a large undertaking and simple pages are easier to create and often more elegant anyway.