Sunday, February 27, 2011

Accidental Brilliance

Every now and then I do something brilliant and don't even know it. Let me start from the beginning...

Back before Kaycie's birthday in November I got to thinking that it would be cool to make a photobook of some of the better pictures I've taken of her over the year and get the fam copies for Christmas. Now, I have seen photobooks by some companies that looked pretty bad and I didn't want to spend a pile of money to get several made if they didn't look good, so I started shopping around for coupon codes to companies where I could order a cheap one to see how they turned out. Poof! The first one I found was a free classic canvas book from Picaboo. (Free, up to 20 pages, with a classic canvas cover. I had to pay the $8 shipping.) Perfect. I downloaded the software, put together a 20 page book of awesomeness, and ordered one. It arrived within a week and looked darn good. We decided to order from them, but made some changes. We decided we wanted the custom photo cover and added more pages (particularly of her birthday party and some 1 year portraits I shot myself) and spent a pile of money getting copies for grandparents, aunts and uncles. And ourselves. =) I loved it. But of course now I had two.



Skip ahead a couple of months. Kaycie is fascinated by pictures of the family. She begs me to hold her up to the photoboard in her room so she can reorganize the pictures and point to people as I name them. The other day she was wreaking havoc in our bedroom when she found the original free photobook. Light bulb! Guess what Kaycie's newest favoritest book is? We flip through it a dozen times a day! She can point out all the family members and has learned to say Mamaw and Papaw while pointing to their pictures. She had tried getting into our good copy and I had to hide it because I didn't want her bending or ripping the pages. This one is a spare, so I don't really care if she destroys it eventually. She likes it so much I'm thinking I'm going to keep an eye out for another free code this fall and get her another one when we make her next book!


I also got smart and made a travel sized version with a mini photo album I got at one of my baby showers. We're heading to visit the Emmer clan in a few weeks so in addition to a ton of pics of family I'm going to add some pictures of Lauren, Ed and the boys so she'll be familiar with them when we get there. Hoping it'll entertain her for at least a few minutes in the car on the way!

I posted this on FB right after Christmas, but if anybody wants to see the book we printed, here's a link. I can't say enough awesome things about Picaboo. The quality is excellent, the shipping was super speedy, and even though you have to pay extra for any pages over 20, they just cut the price per page in half. Which is great, since I've already started working on her second book and it's going to be a lot bigger than the first one!

3 comments:

Nicole Bradshaw said...

The book looks great!!

Allison said...

I love this!

Susan said...

Thanks! I ended up designing it in a hurry and learned a lot about things I'd do different. Starting early this year!