We would like to introduce you to Sunni Refuse, a key member of our Shutterfly Scrapbooking Advisory Team. Together with her husband, Sunni is the founder of Scrapbook-Elements.com which opened April, 2004. She began creating digital scrapbook layouts in 1998 and has developed her skills over the years.

In this insightful article, Sunni tells us how she discovered the art (and fun!) of storytelling from Minnie’s point of view. Who’s Minnie? Their Yorkshire Terrier!

For more information on Sunni and the art of digi scrapping, check out her blog. You can also find great scrapbooking resources on Shutterfly Celebrations. And remember, if you have a photo book you want to share, we welcome you to post it to Shutterfly Gallery. 

“From our Dog’s Point of View”, by Sunni Rafuse

A couple of years ago, my husband and I went to San Diego for a bit of time away to enjoy the beautiful warm fall weather. We took our Yorkshire terrier, Minnie, with us and she was pleased to be included. As crazy as it seems, we actually had so much fun taking her with us and it wasn’t difficult at all to include her in our activities. It was a joy to watch her experience everything new and take it in. She was just a huge bundle of excitement when we went out to do sightseeing but was also perfectly happy just to lounge around the room as well.
I took photos throughout the entire vacation and focused particularly on her involvement as I wanted to create a memory book of our little vacation from our dog’s point of view. When we returned, I sorted the photos in a manner that would allow me to tell the story of our activities in a timeline style. Because I am a digital scrapbooker, I used a digital scrapping set to create the pages for my book, “ Minnie’s Vacation Adventures“. This type of book could easily be created using the standard Shutterfly templates as well. I wanted the book to be visually coherent in color and style so the focus was on the photos and story as much as possible. With the golden yellow of the western sun and the azure blue of the Pacific Ocean, the colors in this particular set were a perfect background.

This album was the first time I had created a Shutterfly book. Once I held the finished product in my hands, I was hooked! The ability to have my journaling included with the photos in a storybook style convinced me that this was the way to go with all future layouts.
For those of us who vacation without young children along, vacations can begin to be difficult to scrap, especially if you visit the same location year after year. Take a different approach to your vacation photos this summer. Take your photos with a pet included. Tell the vacation story from the pet’s point of view. Take a photo of yourself or you and your spouse at the same location each visit. Take photos of landmarks that you note each time you visit. In time, you may find that many of those landmarks make way for something new and the photos you take today will serve as a reminder of the past. Focus on things that serve as signs of the times, whether the price of gas on a particular vacation, the neon signs at the various restaurants, assorted means of transportation available, national historic signs along the road, or any other thing that you note on your vacation that helps you to remember that particular vacation and that particular point in time.
Not all vacations are created equal but the photo books that you create to remind you of those vacations in the future can all be fabulous. Don’t be afraid to use your camera to explore this summer during your vacation and have fun choosing from the possible options available to you for adding those memories to a Shutterfly photo book.