With the dawning of the digital age, the traditional family photo album has all but disappeared. It's true—digital has enhanced much of photography; but developing pictures is another story. Scrapbooking has become a way some people bring their photos off their computers, but time, money, and interest play significant roles in this hobby.

Designer Jen Foxley, a mother of one who tries to find creative ways to preserve her family memories, saw that digital family memory books (printed digital photos in a designed book) were a no-fuss option in between scrapbooking and albums that allowed users to bring their digital photos into daylight. But being LDS, Foxley noticed something strange.

“There was nobody out there who did a line of LDS-specific photo books,” she said. “And because the LDS community is big on keeping family memories and geneaology, heritage, passing things down—it was surprising to me that there wasn’t anything readily available.”

Foxley, who had been contacted by Jim Wright, CEO of photo book publisher Ziblio, began to spearhead design ideas for a new LDS-specific photo book project.

After brainstorming essential LDS themes—like temple marriages, eternal families, baptisms, baby blessings, and family history—she created design templates that allow families to plug in pictures and unique text. Beginning in October, the templates were placed on MyLDSMemories.com for families to use. “It’s just very easy,” Foxley said.

Still, for those who enjoy the creative expression without boundaries, the Web site provides them with the opportunity to create a hard bound book, too.

“You can make it as easy or as complex as you want. If you want to have ultimate design freedom, you can make a book from scratch,” said Foxley. “So you’re talking five minutes for an auto-created book to several hours to create a book from scratch—it all depends on how complex you want to make it.”

She’s found that not only are the templates well received, but it has enriched her life helping to create them.

“As a designer, there’s not many times when you’re designing something that you feel so deeply about. But it’s great to be able to design something with quotes and scriptures and know that other people will hopefully have the same good feeling about it as you do,” she said. “I love spending time on it because it’s something important to me. It’s something I truly enjoy doing.”

My LDS Memories has seven templates right now, but Foxley says they hope to upload new templates each month. They’re also working on even more theme templates that don’t limit a book to the typical 20 pages. Currently they have a limited time offer of one free photo book with each order (expires November 30).

Visit MyLDSMemories.com to learn more.