Tiny Hours

Tiny Hours is a first-year baby booklet: sixteen pages that cover from the hospital to the first birthday without needing a hundred photos. It is for parents who have been meaning to make a baby book for eleven months, and for a grandparent who wants their own copy to keep on the shelf. The minimal style, white pages and Inter, keeps the focus on the small person. The cover holds a photo with the name and the year. Page two is a title page for the birth details: date, time, weight, length. The inside pages mix framed single portraits, photos with a caption and date for the monthly shots, polaroids, a two-photo page for the two sets of grandparents, a photo with a journal block for the firsts, a four-photo grid, two photos stacked, a six-photo contact sheet for the faces and hands and feet, and a closing quote page for the thing you would like them to read at eighteen. The back cover has a small photo and a sign-off.

Baby photos are almost all close-ups on a phone, which crop cleanly into every slot here. Put the monthly photos in the caption pages so the date sits beneath each one, and keep the framed pages for the two or three portraits that made you stop. This is the free-tier maximum of sixteen pages, so it costs nothing to make and is four sheets of A4 or Letter. A matte double-sided inkjet paper around 140 gsm holds the whites and survives being read on a lap. Print the cover sheet on something heavier if you can. The one-sheet test page is worth running first because the framed pages have thin margins that show a badly offset back side.

Printing this booklet means two pages per side on both sides of the sheet: 16 pages is 4 sheets of A4 or Letter, nested and folded to A5 or half-letter. If your printer duplexes, use the flip-edge setting shown on the download card; if not, print Side A, reload the stack and print Side B, and run the free one-sheet test page first so you learn your printer's flip before spending photo paper. 100 to 120 gsm matte paper for the inside, 160 to 200 gsm for the cover if your printer's bypass tray takes it, and score the fold on anything heavier than 160 gsm. Two staples on the spine with a long-arm stapler, or open a normal stapler flat over a folded towel. The template uses 24 photos across 16 pages.