There’s a magnificent, inspirational new book on the market by designer Vanessa Holden and photographer Susie Cushner, both at the top of their respective fields. It’s called Photo Album, The Essential Guide for Sorting, Sharing + Keeping Photos, published by Cahoon Hollow Press. It’s a smallish coffee-table size book, and once you start looking through it, you just can’t put it down. Rich with stunning photographs and expert how-to advice, it makes you want to stop what you’re doing and start new photo album projects.

Virtually every photo album shown in the book is a Kolo photo album. Here’s a bit more description from the book jacket:

...this book shows how fun and easy it is to create photo albums that are beautiful, rich and impactful, befitting the memories they represent... Whether assembling an inkjet album using digital photography, or simply sliding 4x6 prints into an elegant brag book, Photo Album shows how to elevate the beauty and emotional impact of a photo album, turning it into an instantly cherished heirloom.

You can read more about Photo Album here at www.kolo.com . Kolo is selling it on their web site and word is that it will soon be available at many retail stores that sell Kolo albums, which are listed on Kolo’s store locator.

- Ugo

A farmers' market photo rainbow by photographer Jules Bianchi.

Happy Thanksgiving

Artist Lie Fhung, featured in a previous post on Koloist, turns a Kolo Noci photo album into a work of art using photographs of her own art installations with other media and materials, including stamps, copper tag and copper wire. The embryo stamp is Fhung's design, available at Ztampf.

Her album reflects themes that she likes to explore in her art, such as Invisible Cages and Flight, as seen in her recent solo exhibition in Jakarta. Much more about this project is here.

For some interesting articles about Lie Fhung's art, go here.

- Ugo

If you hand one thousand artists each a blank book and set 'em loose, you will get back one thousand very different projects. Thus the beauty of creativity and individual expression.

For a recent Kolo event at c!ty'super's Log-On store at Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Lie Fhung was one of the artists "set loose" with blank Kolo photo albums. She came back with "hybrid albums" that were exquisite, unique, and very Fhung.

She has a style all her own, as evidenced by this Kolo Newbury photo album project, "Childhood Memories." Here are her comments about the three photos of the project shown above:

Cover Window: This is the chartreuse Kolo Newbury photo album with Soft White Pages. I placed a dried flower between transparent sheets, stamped with decorative border on the "window."

Layout 1: Background paper, appliques and lace are all from Bohemian Rhapsody Kit. File Tab Holder is from Birthday Bliss Kit. All from Ztampf! by Lie Fhung.

Layout 2: The chartreuse green background paper and the colorful floral cutout are from the Year In Revue Add-On Kit . The tag is from the Quiet Joy Kit. The whole layout itself was then mounted onto the album page then stamped with Ztampf! Floralique Clear Stamps. All from Ztampf! by Lie Fhung. Font is Jane Austen. I printed the photo separately then stuck onto the digital print page with KOLO Photo Corners and glue tape.

Many of the products (such as stamps and kits referenced) used in the making of this Kolo Newbury album are her own designs, and can be found at www.ztampf.com

More details about this project are here.

An accomplished "digiscraptist," Fhung is a graphic designer perhaps best known for her ceramics. In her home country Indonesia, where she recently exhibited in Jakarta, she is known as "The Mother of Ceramics." Check out more about Fhung and her intriguing artwork here.

- Ugo

Our friend HC sent in these images to bring us up-to-date on her quest to make all her holiday gifts this year. We showed another project from HC in a previous post that you can see here.

So my latest obsession is this Kolo Riva photo album. I love the way the embossed-frame pages set off my photographs. I've put together several as Christmas gifts already. Seems like a good year to give less-expensive "comfort gifts," so I'm cleaning out my drawers stuffed with photos (still in the developer's envelopes!) and finally getting them into albums.

This one I made for my mother-in-law, who at age 86 traveled half-way across the world to visit Hong Kong with my husband, his sister and me. It was an incredible adventure, and we wanted her to have a souvenir photo album to remember it by.

I took a couple hundred photos during that trip, but culled my favorite 30 representative shots for this brag book. A matching Kolo Hudson photo album will house the rest.

This is the first Riva with black pages that I've tried, and it's perfect for the colorful Hong Kong photos. It was fun to journal on the pages, too. Accidentally dropped a tiny blob of the silver ink on a page, but a little working with an X-Acto knife and a black Sharpie fixed it.

I'm feeling a little guilty about how easy it's been to put together these albums. It feels like an album this nice should be more work. These come together so fast I can't believe it.

For more photos of this project go here.

- Ugo