personal gifts | telling family tales

A project I would like to do in the future as a gift to my extended family has to do with the love letters my grandparents wrote to each other before they got married. I’d like to transcribe them but also scan them so that everyone could see what the originals looked like but also make it easier to read them.

This project could be easily shared on a cd or dvd. But it would also be nice in a book format with the image of the letter on one page and the transcription on the facing page. I think reading these old letters would help today’s generation have a whole new understanding of their great-grandparents.

You could do the same thing with letters from a family member while away at school or war or some other common theme for a series of correspondences.

Last year I made one of Blurb.com‘s weekly planners for a friend. It turned out really nice with a photo for each month and the front and back covers. This year they have even more options and with their BookSmart tool it is an afternoon or evening project. There are other planners out there that you can customize with photos but in my searching I didn’t find one that will let you add important dates.

Of course you can design your own planner from top to bottom in Adobe InDesign but that isn’t an afternoon project and BookSmart gives a surprising amount of control. Which ever route you take I think it would be fun to put together a family planner with historic photos and important dates from the past. Click on the image below to a Blurberati Blog post about their weekly planner.