The answer: a photo book
But before I could start putting everything together I was still overwhelmed by so many questions; How big of a book? How could I make all that text fit nicely? What size font could I use without being too small? What about all those pictures every week? How would the pictures print? How could I make it look good? I also had a long debate between a few different companies but with a coupon for a free photobook from Shutterfly I decided to bite the bullet knowing that if I didn't like how it turned out I wouldn't have the guilt of wasting money. Speaking of Shutterfly coupons, sign up with for their newsletters on your email and follow them on Facebook, they always have a promo going on - sometimes it is free shipping, sometimes it is 40% off
The Shutterfly website is very user friendly, someone less tech savvy (or less picky haha) could easily take the Simple path where all you have to do is arrange photos and add your text into the boxes. I chose to do the Custom path because I knew right away that there wouldn't be something readily available for the amount of stuff I needed to pack into this book (also because I am crazy picky and love graphic design). Still it was really easy and after a few hours, mostly spent collecting all the stuff that I wanted included, I was ready to order.
But lets talk details a little bit because I had a really hard time figuring out how the font sizes or photo sizes would translate to print. So I started with the 8x8 hard cover photo book, I figured if I could fit everything in nicely it would be a great size to sit on our shelf or have on the coffee table (spoiler alert, everything fit great!). I used the font Backtalk (regular) size 10 for all of the journal, it is easy to read and considering the amount of stuff we included it looks so good!
I started with our "bump dates" since those would be the bulk of the book (34 total from 5 weeks to 38 weeks pregnant) and because I went with the Custom path I was able to play with the layout until I got it just right then I used the duplicate option from the Pages drop down menu. This way all the information would fit but having the same layout would highlight the big change in pictures as my belly grew page by page.
Then I had a few special pages I wanted to include in our book; like my three trimester summary right up at the front where all the little things like cravings and symptoms to milestones and weight gain are all in one place and one of my favorite pages where (almost) all of our favorite ultrasound pictures are side by side and it is so fun to see how much she changed and grew with each one.
and all of our maternity photos, where we celebrated our little daughter and threw all of the concerns that popped up during our anatomy scan to the wind.
Saving the best for last, a perfect ending to my pregnancy book - our beautiful baby girl's birth story (complete with all sorts of ooey gooey lovey dovey).
Ahh.. I just love it! It is such a wonderful book to flip through and I cannot believe I actually fit everything in it. I love being able to sit down and see all the photos and read my own words as we celebrated each week of my pregnancy. As far as the big debate on quality - I think it is pretty great, the photos are clear and the pages are sturdy. This is the one that got me addicted to Shutterfly photo books. I even went and put together a keepsake book for my pregnancy with Gabriel, which makes it kind of nice to see my two kids books right beside each other.
But before I could start putting everything together I was still overwhelmed by so many questions; How big of a book? How could I make all that text fit nicely? What size font could I use without being too small? What about all those pictures every week? How would the pictures print? How could I make it look good? I also had a long debate between a few different companies but with a coupon for a free photobook from Shutterfly I decided to bite the bullet knowing that if I didn't like how it turned out I wouldn't have the guilt of wasting money. Speaking of Shutterfly coupons, sign up with for their newsletters on your email and follow them on Facebook, they always have a promo going on - sometimes it is free shipping, sometimes it is 40% off
The Shutterfly website is very user friendly, someone less tech savvy (or less picky haha) could easily take the Simple path where all you have to do is arrange photos and add your text into the boxes. I chose to do the Custom path because I knew right away that there wouldn't be something readily available for the amount of stuff I needed to pack into this book (also because I am crazy picky and love graphic design). Still it was really easy and after a few hours, mostly spent collecting all the stuff that I wanted included, I was ready to order.
But lets talk details a little bit because I had a really hard time figuring out how the font sizes or photo sizes would translate to print. So I started with the 8x8 hard cover photo book, I figured if I could fit everything in nicely it would be a great size to sit on our shelf or have on the coffee table (spoiler alert, everything fit great!). I used the font Backtalk (regular) size 10 for all of the journal, it is easy to read and considering the amount of stuff we included it looks so good!I started with our "bump dates" since those would be the bulk of the book (34 total from 5 weeks to 38 weeks pregnant) and because I went with the Custom path I was able to play with the layout until I got it just right then I used the duplicate option from the Pages drop down menu. This way all the information would fit but having the same layout would highlight the big change in pictures as my belly grew page by page.
Then I had a few special pages I wanted to include in our book; like my three trimester summary right up at the front where all the little things like cravings and symptoms to milestones and weight gain are all in one place and one of my favorite pages where (almost) all of our favorite ultrasound pictures are side by side and it is so fun to see how much she changed and grew with each one.
and all of our maternity photos, where we celebrated our little daughter and threw all of the concerns that popped up during our anatomy scan to the wind.
Saving the best for last, a perfect ending to my pregnancy book - our beautiful baby girl's birth story (complete with all sorts of ooey gooey lovey dovey).
Ahh.. I just love it! It is such a wonderful book to flip through and I cannot believe I actually fit everything in it. I love being able to sit down and see all the photos and read my own words as we celebrated each week of my pregnancy. As far as the big debate on quality - I think it is pretty great, the photos are clear and the pages are sturdy. This is the one that got me addicted to Shutterfly photo books. I even went and put together a keepsake book for my pregnancy with Gabriel, which makes it kind of nice to see my two kids books right beside each other.
So are you a fan of photo books?
See you next week!
xo, Anne
See you next week!
xo, Anne
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