So this month the little princess turns 3… I decided for her birthday to make her a mini photo book especially since I wanted to try artisan state it is an american company but I have since discovered they print in China so the printing and delivery were super quick to Australia.

I decided on the 4x4 little black book - truth be told I perused the site several times and couldn't really tell the difference so I planned on ordering both Olivia's book ( in the little black book) and the other project I worked on this holidays - top 100 2014 photos but I hit a snag and it wasn't the fact that as usual it had US 6x8 sizing not the A5 sizing we get here - nope the snag was the fact that you can only have up to 50 pages in the book, well turns out my top 100 is 126 pages or there abouts so it won't even fit in two books so I ditched that idea and instead ordered just Olivia's book and I am so glad I did because it would have been super thick with 50 pages. Olivia's with its 20 something pages is just perfect.

So the book - well first of all I have to say it was super duper quick production, super cheap shipping(at under $10) and fast delivery (literally over the  weekend) - gosh i love DHL… they are like my favourite delivery company.

What about the book?
Well the pages literally are a whole print on each double page so it looks really good when the print goes over two pages, The print Quality is like a photo I'd get from my local photo place teds or the like, a little on the light side for me (lighter than my screen)  I have some of these photos printed and they were definitely a shade darker than this book - although the pages are not too much to be a huge issue, it seems very similar to the quality and colour of print of my books from photo books australia. I love the thick board quality of the pages, just like the board books that you buy in the shops perfect  for a 3 year old  - the pages that have a photograph covering them look better printed than the ones that white space or text.

The cover
the cover texture is much nicer than on the website - if you were skilled in the art of ripping covers off books (and yes I know some who are) it would be quite easy to get off(easier than every other photo book i own) but for a child who doesn't it is perfect and very sturdy. The back of this cover is white - because stupid me didn't quite understand the website  - when you set up the book it asks if you want a black book, a leather book or a hard cover photo book - well I selected black book and thought that meant the book cover was black - turns out it doesn't because my book cover is white - well white on the back - it has a photo on the front - had I known this I probably would have selected black, pink or a photo - but I couldn't quite figure out how the pink would look over the top of a black book cover - i think that might be an issue with their name - but maybe their other customers are more cluey, or maybe they need a picture of different coloured black books on their website.

The software
Firstly it is an online one - so you have to load your photos first but that is pretty day to do although you cant use the program whilst it is uploading - you can upload several images at once, and it is fairly quick. The software was super easy to use - I recently had a conversation with another (shall not be named) company over the fact that their software does not have an option to place single full pages into the book - she told me in a slightly condescending and frustrated tone that you could manually make the frame bigger to fit the page and put the photo in and that she could walk me through how to do it - my response was I don't want to do that - truth was I had played with their software knew I could do that but knew it was time consuming and annoying - well this software is the same in that it doesn't provide a  page template that has 2 full single pages - but it has a template with two frames that fill the width of the page and I can  drag and click into place to make them fill the whole page in under a second - super quick cause they lock into place.  I didn't really use that template though for this book - I just selected from the ones they had and added photos. It didn't take me long to figure out the software - the most difficult part was accessing templates - you have to click on how many photos you want to bring up the templates, there are lots of different templates and they are easy to adjust if need be - add frames to delete and resize. As the pages are  double pages they are locked together which makes them easy to rearrange. The text proportion only has a limited number of fonts - this is what i hate about online photo places - and was perhaps the most difficult and time consuming part because you add the text to their box and then place it. After getting the book I can see that text is less of a priority. It is however fairly easy to change the colour of text background if need be (I just couldn't find a consistent  colour that went with each photo. I did find that there was one page (can't recall which) where I was only offered the option of set colours but for the most part you can choose from any colour available)

Compared to:
Well I have a wealth of different brand photo books in my house - love starting them and every so often I finish one.

Blurb - I make no secret Blurb is like my least favourite book company - I have printed a few books through blurb a couple several years back and one from a few a few months ago because i thought i'd try again and granted the newer one is better overall(with the exception of the binding - the older binding was great), print quality wise the newer  is not bad but since it wasn't cheap i expect better  - Needless to say the quality of the photo is better in this little black book - than both blurb books - although I prefer the quality of the text in the blurb book (it could be the different fonts of the whole white space thing.)

Photobooks Australia - I have several books through them mostly landscape mostly apish size - over a few years - the most recent was about 2 years ago, they are quite cheap if you catch them on special, for quite cheap the quality is quite good - I'd say on par print wise with the little black book - infact if you put them side by side you'd be hard pressed to tell the different - print wise ; the real difference is the little black book has rigid (read board book) pages and the photo book australia regular pages  that if you hold up to the light you can see the photos on the next page through(ever so slightly more than the blurb ones). I like the quality of the paper though.

Picpress
I am going to put it out there and say although I like the little black book I prefer pic press - to be fair i usually make the most expensive book they have (or those are the ones i have at home the Avant Garde in Nu shots this is called the deluxe photo book) it has lay flay pages which whilst not as seamless as the ones in the little black book are pretty awesome. And to be fair I think I have the laminate pages too - which are an extra option -  but the paper is just beautiful and some how even my worst photos look awesome - and there are some pretty bad photos in there because one of them had only the tiniest bit of red light (it was in a pretend submarine) And yes the text looks awesome - so for me it doesn't really compare but then they have won award for print quality and are significantly more expensive (even the shipping is more expensive.) This is the company I am printing my 2014 Top 100 photos - because there a5 books offer upto 160 pages (i think) and yes this is the book you get and go "oooh, ahhh" over. I do think though that the little black book makes a better gift for a 3 year old though, simply because the pages are sturdier and you can even get a thicker option.

Sharing:
I love that they offer the option to share - I actually made this book at the end of december but am only sharing now because it was a birthday gift.  So here it is:

The conclusion:
The print quality is good (albeit a little light)
Love the board thick pages.
Prefer full cover  photo pages - great for 2 page photos
i would definitely use them again although I feel they are better for a special little project such as a road trip or birthday party rather than a yearly photo book.