inside flap – the jacket is nice and sturdy
back of dust jacket
my mosaic prologue page + the title page
here are a few sample pages
remember how I agonized over the layout on the right? I ended up going with the first version after all!
I tried a 2-page spread that didn’t work out so well. eta: Blurb does not provide a template or set of guidelines on how to set the image so it spans across two pages correctly. I think this is because the measurement would vary so greatly, depending on the size of the book and where the two page spread happens to be in the book. I will probably try this again with my next book. Now that I have this book to reference, I think I’ll be able to play around with the spacing and get better results.
Here are things that I will do differently with the next blurb book I make. I will be very careful with the edges. On two of my pages, some of the text was cut off. As I mentioned earlier, all in all, I am very happy with the way the book turned out. And now I also get to experience the joy of sharing these photos with my family and friends. 🙂
Are you ready to get all of those photos sitting on your hard drive onto layouts and printed? You can do it!!! Here are a few tips to help you manage your project.
1. decide on the theme of the book (ie., summer of 2009, birthday photos, a family vacation). for your first project, start off with something small. the theme of my book was simple: maddie’s first three months. Although I had roughly 3,000 photos to go through, it was much less daunting a task because I kept the focus on maddie, which meant that I could skip right over photos that didn’t have anything to do with maddie. I also knew that I wanted to have the photos organized in chronological order. This order really helped me to put together layouts very quickly.
2. establish a good filing system it takes a lot of files (photo files, layered psd files, flattened high-reso files for print) to create a photo book. this can easily become a very messy project if you don’t establish a good filing system right off the bat. create separate folders for each category: photos, layered files (working files), upload for print files, and for some of you that want to share your work online, upload to web files.
there are a couple more things I want to add to this list but it is 3:45am now and I think I should sneak in a little nap before the girls wake up in a few hours. I’ll be back later to finish the rest of this list. good night all!
Thanks for sharing, Liz. I'm so glad it turned out well 🙂
It's so beautiful, Liz! Thank you for sharing the experience!
wow, that book is so wonderful, I wish I had done something like that for my girls!
I did a yearbook for a middle school and the printery had us submit it as pdfs. They can send you a pdf preset that you download into Adobe. It makes sure none of your page gets cut off and also lets you preview how it will print. That way you would be able to tell if your text was blurry or not. The book turned out so beautiful. I am so inspired to start on one today!
I LOOOOOOVE your book Liz! whenever i see a post of your book i really get inspired! and thanks for the tips!!!
This is absolutely gorgeous, Liz, what a great memorie for you and maddie !
I have to look after the same book in France for my baby to come!
Thanks, Liz! And congrats on the book!
omg Liz it is amazing!!! wow how great book!! thanks for sharing!!!!
it's absolutely beautiful!!
pdfs keep the text as vector and printing at 1200 dpi, jpegs rasterize the text at 300 dpi so it isn't as sharp.
Beautiful Book Liz! I would love to do one of these for Addison. Do you use the same photo treatment to each photo?
Tara
This is gorgeous! Where did you have it printed?
it's stunning!!!
It's gorgeous!
YAY!! How gorgeous. And I LOVE how thick it is — a true book! It sounds like the verdict is to go with pdf on blurb. We live and we learn!
It's so beautiful, Liz! Thank you for sharing the experience!
i would like the same things for my daughter (5 months)
What size for your page ??? thanks
It's gorgeous I have thought of giving them a try I definitely will now. Just fyi yes PDF text will ALWAYS ALWAYS print crisper and blurb has their preset already on the site. I downloaded it already. I worked for a Newspaper for over 13 years and we had an in house print shop we always used PDF and any advertiser that submitted ads for us to print were always in PDF format!
What a treasure! Thanks so much for sharing it. I, too, liked your first version of that right page (of course I wasn't going to say anything–you needed to pick the one you liked best; but so glad you picked that one!) You did an amazing job!!
What a gorgeous book to treasure always! You have inspired me to do some as well – I was thinking I might do one for each year (since I've had the kids anyway).
The super talented Yin has some advice on 2-page spreads that she generously shares with her fab templates. (http://simplyyin.blogspot.com/)
I haven't really looked into too much but basically I think you duplicate the middle part of the photo a little on each side of the spine.
Do you mind me asking what font it is you use? It always looks so lovely! BTW, was that the premium paper or regular?
I forgot to mention, I LOOOVE your mosaic pages – so gorgeous! I might just have to borrow that idea!
this is sooooo nice…
tnx for sharing 🙂
thank you everyone for your stopping by and for your awesome feedback! If you start on one, be sure to link me so I can see too!
Debbie – thank you for the info, I didn't know about a pdf preset.
LEDesigns – thanks for explaining that! vector vs. raterized…I get it now. thank you!
Tara – In general, I used the same actions throughout. I did make sure that the photo treatments were the same for each DAY since that's how I grouped my photos. thanks for asking!
Jenni – I got the book printed at blurb. I updated the original post with a link to their site.
Shirley – thanks for the explanation and thanks for mentioning the blurb preset, I'm going to check that out!
Anne – the font I used is american typewriter.
Your book looks incredible. I'm seriously jealous!!!
Oh, and your daughters are drop dead gorgeous, too 🙂
I was about to ask you who you used for your books. I want to put together a book for my friend who visited for a week this summer as a christmas present. Your post will help, so thanks for sharing! By the way, the book is gorgeous!
Wow, this is a fabulous book! What a joy! What a gift! Congratulations on getting it done… and done so nicely too! 🙂
HI Liz love your work,
the difference between jpeg and pdf files are that everytime you do something to a jpeg file you lose some of the file info and after several saves you will notice a lower quality image.pdf files are bigger but hold their resolution.
SB
This is totally gorgeous! I love it!!! So sweet!!!
Hi there
I love your blurb book – such clean beautiful style! I’m about to order my own book from them, and I had a quick question. Did you end up using the premium paper or the standard? If you used the standard paper, did you have any problems with seeing a picture on the other side of the page (pages too thin)? How many pages was your album? I love the thick size of it!
Hi Katie,
I ordered this one using the standard paper, I don’t think they offered the premium paper back in 2009 when I ordered this book. The standard is definitely thinner. When you hold up the page, you can see there is something printed on the other side but it’s not severe – not to the point where it is distracting or takes away from the page you’re looking at. If the paper weight is a concern, I’d definitely recommend going with the premium.
The book is 296 pages.
Thanks for your sweet comments!
Hey
Hey Liz, the book looks amazing. quite an inspiration. i’ve recently decided to make a photo book for my uncle’s 10th wedding anniversary. so far it has been hectic. i still haven’t made up my mind between shutterfly and blurb so i have ongoing books on both websites. so am nearing the end of the project but the problem am having is the cover. one of my attraction to blurb was the dust cover but the problem i have is the durability of the cover. my uncle has young kids so am wondering if the book most precisely the cover will be able to withstand the kids very active hands!
and great projects by the way. gets my creativity juices flowing!
The Story Time link doesn’t work…would you mind sharing what it says or a link to another site with the quote? I’m so interested in reading it.
Also, I am planning on doing a blurb book for my daughter’s first year. Do you think that is too much?
This was very helpful. I really like your method to preserving family memories.
This was very helpful. I really like your method of preserving family memories.