Have you ever seen the children’s books about a piglet named Olivia? They’re a great read, even if you don’t happen to have a suitably small person around. When a baby named Olivia came into our lives these books were a natural.
And then along came a baby named Kye. So where do you find books about Kye? There’s a solution, of course, and it was put to me by the peanut gallery gathered to consider the issue. I could write some.
It turns out this is no longer hard or even expensive. Just think laterally.
There’s any number of internet sites that make up photo albums — you just assemble them onscreen, inserting the pictures you want until you have a full album, then send it off into the ether with your preferred payment method. Some days later the finished album turns up in the mail, good enough to leave nonchalantly on the coffee table.
I’ve used them to make up albums of holidays, of Christmases and just favourite pictures. They’re always a buzz.
My favourite is a website called Snapfish; relatively intuitive, reliable and good value. And it gives me lots of room for captions.
Ah, so now you know where I’m going with books about the adventures of the fearless boy-hero Kye. Just gather the relevant photos (or scans of illustrations), assemble in the correct order and use the caption space under each to run the story. All that’s left is by far the hardest and most time-consuming bit; writing the story. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Now the album idea has been taken up in a slightly different guise at a website called postercandy. This one specialises in assembling your photos into collages on a single sheet of photo-grade paper. So instead of having a collection of individually framed photos on your wall or sideboard you have just one frame with lots of pictures in it.
You can gather collections together for each poster, just as you gather them for albums. Indeed, were you so inclined you could gather together embarrassing photos of Olivia and Kye as infants and present them as 21st birthday gifts years later. My experience is that such ideas are always worth the wait involved.
The bug with postercandy is that you need an account with Instagram, a photo-sharing website for smartphones and tablets.
But even with a smartphone you face a second layer of downloads, agreements and privacy provisions for a service you may never use. Which to me seems most user-unfriendly, bordering on dumb.
