There are three phases to organizing a photo album or online gallery - and we've finally arrived at the fun part: Putting it all together. 

Sorting your photos - choosing which you'll display and which you'll discard - is the hardest part. Organizing your final bunch of display photos is just one degree of difficulty below that, but it's all worthwhile when you get to build your album, photobook or online gallery! Plus you get to go shopping (online or in-stores), and retail therapy has been known to brighten a dull day.

First, decide what you're going to do: Analog or digital?

Analog: If you've been playing along at home by pulling photos out of shoeboxes, you're likely going to build a photo album or scrapbook. In this instance, materials matter: Make sure you protect your memories by using photo-safe paper, adhesives and embellishments. Usually these products are described as archival quality, or acid- and lignin-free. Your local scrapbooking store - or any of the large craft chains - will have all kinds of options, but here are the basics (and my preferences):

1) An expandable scrapbook or photo album with extra pages. Better to have more pages than you think you'll need, rather than to run out of pages mid-book and get stuck until you can make a run to the craft store... and remember, no one's perfect: Mistakes happen. I use Kolo albums - the books are well-constructed and they allow a lot of flexibility in terms of adding pages and placing photos. I prefer black pages over white or natural because I think black sets off photos better.  I built Wolfgang an album of the Van Halen tour using Kolo products - they look very clean and gender-neutral. As a teen-aged boy, he wasn't embarassed to have his aunt make him a scrapbook - at least, he didn't act like it.

2) Adhesives. I go with double-sided Scotch tape. It's cheap, clean and easily available - you can buy tons of it at your local office supply store for a very low price. I have used special glue dispensers and little photo corners with peel-off backing and precious little tape guns, and frankly, nothing performs as well as double-sided Scotch tape. Buy 4 more rolls than you'll think you'll need. 

3) Gel pens. I do my captioning and journaling in silver gel pen. It really pops against a black page - and regular, colored gel pens also show up well on plain, white pages. Just make sure you're getting a gel pen and not a glitter pen. Glitter products can be really hard to read. Gel pens look sharp and don't tend to bleed. Buy two.

4) Scissors and a paper cutter. Now is not the time to go cheap. Find yourself a good pair of scissors (no running allowed!) and a high quality paper cutter. I have two paper cutters - a Creative Memories-brand swing-arm cutter that chops down (and works wonderfully on photos) and a Fiskars sliding-blade cutter that works well on large sheets of paper. You'll use these tools on almost every page in your album - to crop photos or cut special paper, so this is an investment that will be with you for a lifetime.

5) Paper, embellishments, fun stuff. Go crazy, check out the pretty papers, groove on the fun stickers and giggle at the little cut-outs and hole-punches. HAVE FUN. When I first started building albums, I would buy every geegaw embellishment that caught my eye - but I've come to realize it slows me down. Now, I'll buy in just one color family depending on my theme - reds, blacks, grays for Wolf's album; neutrals and blues for a beach vacation. This way, I don't have to make too many decisions; my albums look thematically consistent from beginning to end; and I can move quickly from page to page... going monochromatic has cut my album assembly in half. But that's just me - you can be as creative and colorful as you want to be. It's your book, after all!

And don't think you have to be crazy-creative, either: You can also put together a fast, fun, festive photo book by using slip-in photo-pockets, which work really well for "year" books and big compilations of old photos. 

Now, if you decide to build your photobook Digitally, you have less intensive supply needs. Basically, you'll need a computer, photo-editing software and a photobook publisher. I used MyPublisher.com to build Valerie and Tom's wedding album and Italian vacation album. I like MyPublisher.com because they have an excellent Mac interface and a lot of very neat templates and layouts. I also appreciate the fact that they have many sales throughout the year so you can purchase multple books as gifts through a buy-one / get-one deal. Again, there are many publishers to consider - and I am admittedly new to the photobook-publishing game, as I still prefer to feel the pictures in my hands and I like to include a lot of extra items, like tickets, wine labels and printed materials in my albums.

Whether you go analog or digital, the process of assembling your album is still the same: Go through Step 1 and sort all your photos; then do Step 2 and organize your photos into a theme and timeline and some semblance of order. Now you're ready for Step 3, which is putting it all together.

1) Assemble two pages at a time - Always look at facing pages together as this helps you maintain continuity through your theme. Digital programs should allow you to do this as well. By working on two pages together, you are seeing the book the way the reader will see it. I remove the pages from the album to work on them, because it's easier and it's less likely that I'll spill something on my whole album if I'm just working on two pages. I layout photos on the pages first, before I apply the adhesive.

2) Crop, embellish and photo-correct as you go - I prefer to crop and embellish the photo I'm working on right now. Because I already put them in order during Step 2, I didn't waste time on pictures that may never make it into the book. Even at this point, there are still photos that I'll discard because they just don't fit - and don't be afraid to discard, even at this late date.

3) People look inward - A basic layout rule is always to have the people in the photos looking at other photos (or people in other photos), not off the page or into the crack. 

4) Leave as much (or as little) room to journal or write on the outside margins - Cluster your photos toward the center of the album and then write on the outer margins, either beside or below the photos. It's easier for people to read and follow your thoughts. And don't feel like you have to write anything at all. Many digital photobooks have picture-only options, which look fabulous. In fact, I used a photo-only option for Valerie and Tom's wedding album. I merely headlined the different sections (Hair & Make Up, Ceremony, First Dance, etc.)

5) Write last - and add any finishing touches at the end of your project - Once you get your pictures on the pages and put the album together, you can write to your heart's content, or add extra stickers or die-cuts. It's up to you. I like to save these details for last because I feel it's more important to get the bones of the book in place before I start getting too crazy with making it pretty. Adding these details at the end is a lot like putting the icing on the cake!

Well, that's my three-story tour on how to build a photo album. I hope this helps you with your own creative projects!