How to create a Father's Day Mini Album:

1. Decide how many snapshots your 4 X 6 mini-album will hold and purchase the album. Mini-albums are generally 12 sleeves and up. You will also decide how many of these pages will be photo pages and how many will be handwritten personal notes (see #10).

2. Once you know how many photos you will include, create a folder on your harddrive titled "Dads Album." Go through your photo files and choose the photos you want to use, and drag them to the "Dads Album" folder. Find a few more photos than you will actually need. Remember, these album pages will be VERTICAL so when you can, choose vertical photos (although you can easily resize horizontal photos to work).

3. Purchase and download the Love You Dad Instant SnapSheet Album.

4. Launch Photoshop Elements. From within Elements, open Fathers Day 1.png. This is the cover or first sleeve in your album. Then browse to Dads Day folder and open the photo you'd like to use in this page.

5. Click and drag your photo onto the PNG. It will appear as Layer 1. In the Layers Palette, make sure it is beneath Layer 0 (the art elements). Resize the photo as necessary by clicking and dragging the corners. Hit the green checkmark to approve sizing.

6. Go to File>Save As and give the project a new name, such as Dads1, and save it as a JPEG.

7. Do the same for all other photo pages you want to create.

8. Upload all of your JPEG photo pages to your favorite photo retailer, and slip them into your mini-album. It's that simple!

9. If you want to include a personal note in the album, there are two files in the album kit to use as note pages: Notepad.jpg and Notepad Plain.jpg. Just upload these with your finished files and write your personal message on them with a Sharpie. Order as many as you like for your mini-album.

Or, you can just print these notepad files on your home printer and trim them to 4 X 6.

10. You can also use these SnapSheets for a birthday gift; there is a Birthday 1.png that subs for the cover page.

11. Finished 4 X 6's can also be used in magnet frames.

This project in my life

I have always loved to make personal gifts for Father's Day, including photo collages and framedphotos. I was excited to make it easy for my customers to make a quick and cute mini-album.

When I made the demo for this project, I just went through the posts on my daughter Aubree's blog to find photos of my son-in-law, Cody, with my granddaughter Caddison. I found a TON of them! The great thing was that Aubree uploads the full size photos, so my just clicking on the image within the blog, it linked to a full size Picasa image. I just right-clicked "Download  Image to Desktop" and was able to gather 20+ photos in about 15 minutes.

It only took about another 20 minutes to create all 12 photo pages (beginners will find it a bit slower, but hopefully not much). I then uploaded all the new jpegs and a few Notepad jpegs to Costco and picked them up in an hour.

I found the little album at the corner Walgreens, along with a magnet frame.

Quick and easy, and it was fun to see all the loving photos of Cody and little Caddie. When you create your album, you'll relive warm memories of the dad in your life, too!