Graduation Memories

For those of you who have kids graduating - from high school or college - now is the time to get started on their graduation book. You won't want to miss any of those great memories they are making right now, during the last few months of school. Prom, Senior Night, Concerts, Graduation, Senior Trips, etc. There are so many moments to record.

I didn't know about Cherish Bound when my oldest son, Grant, graduated from high school, so he only has a few pictures. (I'm NOT a scrapbooker). Luckily, I found Cherish Bound before my next son, Michael, graduated. I had a great time putting his book together. The first thing I did was his graduation pictures. You can either pay a ridiculous amount of money for one of the professional photo packages, OR you can take them yourself. All you need is a camera, an imagination, a graduate, and a nice place - like a park. I paid someone to do Grant's photos for graduation, but I did Michael's myself. I even took one of his friends, Stuart, to the park and did his pictures too. Here are a few of the great pics I took (if I do say so myself)...





Easy Peasy!! Right? I did change a few of the pictures - to sepia and black and white, etc., using Photoshop.
Instead of paying for expensive announcements, my friend, Carol, helped me Photoshop/InDesign some of my own. I won't say easy peasy here, because it wasn't easy - not for me - but for Carol, who is very talented, it was! We just used 5 of the photos I took and made this great announcement:

So, once that's done, you have them printed (mine were 5x7) and find some nice envelopes and send them out.

Your next photo session will be when you get the cap and gown - a few days before graduation. Make some time to take your graduate to another nice park for more pictures. (see above - Michael's pictures were taken on two different days). Here's one of my favorite photos from the cap and gown shoot I did:

Now, even though you might like this nice graduation book to be a gift on the day of graduation, you can't make it without the actual grad pics, so chill out and take tons of pictures (you might even want to wait until your son/daughter gets back from their senior trip and include those pics) and then work on the book after all the hullabaloo is over. You don't want to be without pics of the actual graduation, right?



Michael didn't really care about recording (in words) all of the fun things that happened during those last few months of school, so his graduation book had mostly pictures. I looked for great graduation quotes and added them here and there throughout the book. I also typed up an essay that Michael did his Senior year - what he had learned in each grade (Kindergarten through 12th grade). This was priceless. You can add anything you want into this book. Here is the cover - I Photoshopped one of the pictures that I took (I made it look like a watercolor - which took just one click of a button).

Michael loved the book! In fact, as a graduation gift for his two best friends, we put together a small graduation book for each of them as well!

And now that you have an idea for sharing those graduation memories, you can go back and do a book for each of your kids - just like I'm going to do for Grant. Here are a few of the fun pictures I'll use in his book:


You can even add some cute little boy pictures to start your book with:

I actually made a small "Graduates" book for me - with both Grant's and Michael's graduation pics. This cute picture was on the back of the book.

Don't forget - Cherish Bound stores your books, so any time you want a copy, just go online and order one. These graduation books are lovely gifts for grandparents, too!

Cherish Bound makes capturing and sharing important memories so easy. Good luck with your graduation books. Email me if you want a list of quotes you can use for graduation, or any other ideas. nafari01@yahoo.com

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