[pinkblue]

Today I wrote a letter to our baby I'm planning on writing a letter every year around bub's birthday and then collating them all along with my favourite photos of them that year, and putting them into a book for him/her to read when he/she is older. I'll also do one once our baby is born with our birth story etc and maybe another when bub is around 6 months old. It will be nice to look back and see what bub's personality was like at each age, what their interests were, their likes and dislikes, milestones they reached etc.

What I need help with is how to make this into a book? Where can I get this done? Is there somewhere I can get a few pages done at a a time and then save them to collate later? I'm imagining a two page spread for each entry or maybe longer if my letter is too long. For my first letter I'd like to have the baby's ultrasound photos as well as some of my maternity photos so bub can see what I looked like when I was pregnant with them. Then for my birth story - photos of them in the first few days of being born etc.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[HollyOllyOxenfre...]

Momento do photo books - could you scan everything in and do it that way?

We're doing something similar for DS, but we just bought a nice hardback notebook and we're writing the letters straight into there.

[pinkblue]

A photo book is pretty much what I'm after, I just don't know how to do it so I can put my letter in also. I don't want to scan the letter in. I'd rather have the letter typed into the page in nice font. So I need to be able to design the pages myself or get someone to design them for me.

[JJ]

There are several photo book companies that let you do this (possibly all of them, not sure). I know a friend of mine gets a lot of photo books done - she has used Blurb numerous times and is very happy with them. She recently had a bad experience with 123 Cheese so recommends people stay away from them. But check out Blurb.

HTH. I'm doing a similar thing at the moment but am going to hand-write it in art journal form (I'm expecting it to take a few years!).

This post has been edited by JJ: 29/11/2012, 09:18 AM

[Kay1]

You could just do them in Word or even in photoshop and make them look the way you want, then convert them to a jpeg and put them in a photo book that way. Or print them and laminate them and put them into some kind of binder so you can keep adding to them. Try the scrapbooking section in hobbies - someone will know I'm sure. Lovely idea. I also write letters to mine each birthday or thereabouts. I told DH to print them out if I die LOL, obviously not as organised as you!

This post has been edited by Kay1: 29/11/2012, 09:18 AM

[mondayschild]

We are doing this through Photobook Australia for our grandchild. Every week when we have him I add photos to a 'first year' book I am making of his life. I have talked about this company before on EB. Their book creation system allows you to just go back and add pages then save the project and keep doing this until you are finished. They have a huge range of ready made book layouts as well that sounds like just what you need. You can also add text to the layouts easily so you could type your letters in direct.

[pinkblue]

We are doing this through Photobook Australia for our grandchild. Every week when we have him I add photos to a 'first year' book I am making of his life. I have talked about this company before on EB. Their book creation system allows you to just go back and add pages then save the project and keep doing this until you are finished. They have a huge range of ready made book layouts as well that sounds like just what you need. You can also add text to the layouts easily so you could type your letters in direct.

That sounds exactly like what I'm after

I'd actually love to do a first year book so maybe I could do one book for bub's first year up until his/her birthday. Then I could include our birth story and photos and letters to our baby every few months with updates on his/her personality, milestones, likes/dislikes etc. Then after that book, I could do up another one. This time with a letter around each birthday from then on.

[pinkblue]

How long can you keep the photobook open until you need to print it off?

[mondayschild]

I've had a couple of designs going for months now. The design program gets downloaded onto your own computer so it is independent of their system. When you are ready to order it you click on an order button and it goes through the process of checking the design then uploading your pages. You then pay for the book and it is in production. It is only at this point of ordering that the design can't be changed or pages added. So really you can keep a design going as long as you want.

[Charlies Angel]

I would be concerned about using online programs for an ongoing project which could span many years. Programs get updated, companies go bust... I think the word files (with hard copy printouts) are a better option so that you have great access to them over a longer time.

But a photobook capturing the first year sounds like a great idea.