Load your photos into a Kolo Noci album in just seconds. Watch this video of one of Kolo's graphic designers loading photos from India into a Kolo Noci Album. Photos were submitted from contestants of the Kolo Photo Contest.

-Kate

Elise Blaha, writer of popular blog, enJOY it, recently took on the project of taking her family’s old photos and transferring them into new, archival Kolo albums. Elise chose to use Lake Hudson 3-Ups, each holding 300 4 in. x 6 in. photos.

I ended up working with Kolo to take the old photos that belonged to my parents – four decades of photos – and put them into new albums. It included everything from their life before my brother and I were born till now. These pictures were stored in disintegrating albums or boxes or bags, tucked into a cabinet on the upstairs floor – dusty, dirty, disorganized and falling apart.

Here is an easy four-step tutorial from Elise. Watch the video for extra tips on making your albums.

Check back for other videos from Elise. Look at her blog, here.

-Kate

Announcing the “Album Trade-In” Event at the Kolo Shop in Boston.

Do your albums have yellowing pages? Are your priceless photos being destroyed by your old albums that were meant to protect them?

Come visit the Kolo Album Bar at the Mall at Chestnut Hill before July 31st for the “Album Trade-In” event. Drop off your old, worn albums and we will give you up to $10 off your new, archival Kolo album ($5 off a Noci album). Limit one $10 credit per album purchase. But there is no limit on how many times you take advantage of this offer. So if you bring in ten albums, you could buy ten albums and get $10 off each album!

Don’t have time to load your album with photos? Don’t worry! Drop off your old filled album and a KoloPro will carefully remove your photos and load them into your new Kolo album for only $15 for each album! No limit on this offer. Bring your whole collection.

Imagine how nice it would be to have all your old albums methodically redone and perfectly laid out in an assortment of beautiful albums. You’d bring all those great memories back to life.

The Kolo Album Bar is near Bloomingdale’s and the Apple Store in the Mall at Chestnut Hill, 199 Boylston Street in Boston’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. Click here for directions.

The Album Trade-In promotion runs now through July 31st. In-store only.

-Kate

Looking for a way to document all of this year’s events in your busy life? Take some tips from Elise Blaha as she creates a Catalina album to record the events of 2011.

I considered a lot of ideas and for awhile thought I was going to go entirely digital with an album or book. But printing all those digital 8.5x11 pages seemed expensive and waiting until the end of the year to have book printed did not appeal to my impatient side. I wanted something I could work on at the end of every month.

The Catalina album I chose has two photo sleeves on each page that are about 4x7.75 and are designed to hold a 4x6 photo. Slipping a 4x6 photo into each sleeve felt a bit too basic so I decided to have my photos printed 4x8 and then at home trim off that extra quarter inch so they would fit in my book. At this size, the photos take up the whole half of the page which makes the book seem more full and less like a traditional photo album. I first mapped out how my pages would go then adhered the photos that would be sharing a sleeve back to back. Next, I slipped the photos into the removed page protectors and punched three holes through both photos, using the existing holes in the sleeve as a guide.

I am planning on doing a monthly "here's what happened" write up in addition to the photo pages.

Now, almost halfway through, I really hope this becomes a yearly tradition that I keep even when do have a bigger family and our lives are more chaotic. I love this album so much. I'm already so glad to have these photos printed and my thoughts saved all together.

Check out Elise’s blog for monthly updates on the project!

-Kate

Stationery Magazine in Japan published this recent profile extolling the design details of Kolo's albums and photo books, singling out the differences between the Kolo Hudson, Kolo Newport, Kolo Newbury and Kolo Noci.

- Ugo