P365 Photobook Finished and Printed

I finally got my P365 album all put together and completed. There are several companies that print custom photobooks- the two  that I have always heard good things about for both quality of the printing and customer service are Shutterfly and MyPicTales. A year ago, the Christmas gift that The Crew was given by the Studio Girls at scrapbookgraphics was a photobook with layouts made by everyone on the Crew and a layout made for each of us by one of the designers. I ordered mine through MyPicTales (MPT) and was very pleased with the quality of the printing and the book itself. So, I decided to use them again for my album this year. The book software, Taleweaver, that they provide for putting together the books is pretty easy to use; I had watched a video from my local copy shop that is now printing photobooks in-house that uses similar software so I it didn’t take me too much fumbling around at first for me.

I can’t say enough about all of the help that Wendy gave me while I was working on this, particularly when I was trying to get the cover to look right. Her templates were a huge help to make sure everything was in the right place to not get cutoff during the printing and assembly process. I didn’t really have to worry about bleed on my pages inside the book this time because of the page design I used throughout, but I have used them in the past for other projects where that was important. Wendy, who also works for MPT as a customer service representative and printing consultant, spent a lot of time with me answering my questions and helping me get the cover looking just right. Thanks, Wendy!

I ordered my book Monday afternoon, it was printed and shipped  by Wednesday, and in my hands Friday afternoon. Even better, it was just like I wanted it! :)

Here are some pictures of my actual book. Those who have been following my blog for a while know that this isn’t the cover I originally designed for my book. I liked the other one, but after putting the whole book together I decided it just didn’t flow with the look of the pages. So, I made a new one using the awesome “Snapping and Scrapping” kit from The Daily Digi. I started with one of the quick pages that came with the kit, and dressed it up to use as my cover and the altered it a bit for the back cover and the title page too. credits: The Daily Digi Scrapping & Snapping at TheDailyDigi.com; MyPicTales Toolkit: Templates Only by Wendyzine at scrapbookgraphics

title page credits (shown below):  The Daily Digi Scrapping & Snapping at TheDailyDigi.com;  Clipping Masks Vol 1 by Natali Design at scrapbookgraphics; fonts: Carpenter ICG, FO Empty Wrapper Lowfat, FO Howie's Stamps Lowfat

The monthly pages are first up at the beginning of the book, and then the weekly pages are in order after them.

Here’s a link to all of my P365 blog entries over the last year, if you want to see all of the pages closer. Or you can view all of the pages in my P365 photo album at facebook HERE.

MyPicTales was looking for books they could print and use as samples at trade shows they would be attending, and I decided to submit my book to their call. I got an email yesterday saying that they had indeed picked it to use- does that count as being ‘published’? LOL! I got a small credit towards another book, and an entry into a drawing for a much bigger credit. Maybe I’ll get lucky and win that too?

Taking a picture of yourself taking a picture is always an interesting production. This one was the best of that day's bunch- and despite it being a bit blurry I think it turned out OK. Thank goodness for Photoshop where you can correct a lot of photo mistakes (or at least reduce them a lot)! I did this page with the same photo that I used on the title page of my book.  
credits: everything at scrapbookgraphics: Darkroom by Tangie Baxter and DeCrow Designs, frame from Warm Wishes by Peta Boardman, White Space 4 by Hillary Heidleberg, Ultimate Staple Stash by Maya; fonts: Snowshoe