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.

Yep, I have a plan - I know right - weird I never have a plan - Dad says "When are you coming to visit?" and I say oh I don't know whenever - he loves to plan - he's notorious for it but me - I rarely plan (well except at work off course - when I always have a plan.)

So here is the 2015 PL  plan inspiration for thick came from Ali Edwards whom is and probably has always been my favourite scrapbooker and a post that I saw on her website linking to a blog by Leslie ann Harvey that you can read here

Before we begin let me say my plan does not involve any 12x12 pages - I am not a fan, find them too big - yes I often scrap in 12x12 but that is more out of habit and lack of supplies 13 years ago when I first started - the reality is - it is really only the last 5-7 years that you have been easily able to get different sizes - to prove that I have a falling apart A4 Coral Coast album from before that because it was absolutely all I could find. So to internet shopping(read international) I say thank you for the choice.

And because of international shopping (oopse internet) I am using 9x12 - at the moment though it is waiting in a new school album that I have  for my girls - it is Navy Blue - I love it but I am guessing since most of my PL albums are black that is what I will choose although white and clean slate are seriously tempting.

And because I have a bunch of left over page protectors that is what I am using - most of them originally 12x12 cut down and sewn shut if needed. (because my sewing machine only works on paper and plastic).

I decided ages ago that since I had a bunch of page protectors left over with vertical photo slots I would try and use some of them this year - BH design w was my favourite this year but rather annoyingly it was only sold in packs with x, y and z.... so you'll see them featured. And yes I am starting a campaign for w in packs by itself - or at least all the same direction page protectors (e.g all 4x6 and 3x4 pockets not 6x4 and 4x3)

So here is some of what I pulled out:
And of course some design H/ design A cut down.

Title page:

I started  with design Z to make my title page:



I loved how fun and easy to use the title page protector was to use  so I decided to keep going and use that style protector with my plan. (And yes for the record the 2015 is a photograph of the stamp that I converted and cut with my silhouette - my work around.)

The Plan:

Section 1 

Comes straight from here - exactly the same because I love it - the monthly title page - similar to what I ended up with last year.

Section 2

Also straight from Leslie Ann Harvey's post down to the same pp for now- well mostly I love it but it is the only part I haven't really though out.

Section 3 

Now here's where it gets a bit different, I decided what was important to me was a brief highlight of each week - similar to the journalling cards I did in PL this year - since I love that and across a year stuff can change and these events may not find there way into section 4 or 5.

Section 4

And then we are back to Leslie Ann Harvey's post similar to her section 5 but I may have used different page protectors. Which I think she described as a scaled down version of week in the life but I view it more as a typical week of my project life.

Section 5

And last but not least is the Around here section - based on this story stamp content. You can get digital stamps too here I think it was actually called prompts - I have to say it continues to be my favourite one so far.
And this month most of those pockets will be devoted to my gorgeous niece who turns 3 and just incase you think I am exaggerating:

Couldn't sleep Friday night…. too quite house with my children away and all (and the afternoon nap because I could probably didn't help.)  So instead I made this for my class of very special kids who all adore calendars right now.

It is that time again ..... for Ali Edwards week in a life ... looking forward to it this year with a decent iPhone camera for when we are out and about... also hoping my kids decide to contribute some photos.
I will as in years past use the digital templates Ali has. There are two options the 6x8 and letter sized ones. I chose the 6x8 because I liked the full sized title for each day but most likely I will resize them to A4 and print them in a photobook at my favourite print lab which now has an open to the public branch called nu shots. I love to use templates when making photobooks as it makes it quick and easy.
Here is a look at the templates:

You can see how i used previous templates to create a photobook here.
But today here's a video showing an easy method to insert pictures into the teemplate.
I used Photoshop creative cloud but also have cs6 and it is fairly similar.

week in a life templates 1 from Lisa Beanland on Vimeo.

So I have a few photoshop brushes... a few too many for my 4 1/2 year old computer that just couldn't cope ... was running too slow (better after I upgraded the RAM but still too slow) and lets face it I work full time and spend the rest of the time acting as taxi driver running for my girls so simply don't have the time to wait 5 minutes for the brushes to load....  I figured there had to be a better way, so I googled it and I found it.... creating sets... something that I am sure they teach in photoshop classes but wasn't in my photography photoshop books.... but let's face it .... I use digital brushes for my photo books and PL ... not to edit photos.
So here goes.... possibly the logest post ever... because a few asked..
1.  click on the brush tool.
 
2. click to see all brushes available - (open brush preset picker)

3. Click the little wheely thing, that gives you viewing options for brushes.

Here you want to scroll down until you get to replace brushes, and click on replace brushes.
4. It will bring up a pop up window like this (I have blacked out some of my file name favourites)
In the pop up box navigate  to where the  first set of brushes you wish to load are.
Choose the brushes (click on them) and click open.
Brush files are identifiable by the little brush icon next to them.

5. It will load the brushes into your brush picker. This method replaces your existing brushes with the new ones. (But don't worry as long as you have  the original ones saved they are not lost - no need to save default photoshop ones.)

6. But ofcourse I have more than one set of studio calico christmas brushes - so now to load the rest. There are a few ways to do this - here is one way.
Click on the wheely thing - scroll down to load brushes and click.

7. Navigate to where your next lot of brushes are, click to select and then click open.

8. Repeat process until you have loaded all of the brushes that you want.
Mine are all in a file marked sc christmas - so I cheated clicked on the drop down box - which gave me my last visited folers, clicked SC Christmas to navigate back to that folder and worked my way down the liat loading all of the brushes. (Again blacked out folder names, not important.)

9. My loaded brushes looked like this:

AKA - A great big mess.... and I won't use some of them so now I am going to organise them in preset manager -
click the wheely thing - scroll down to preset manager - click on the preset manager
(You could also have loaded your brushes straight into the preset manager I didn't - no reason.)
10. the preset manager will open.
To delete an individual brush - click on the brush you wirh to delete - right click - it will bring up options rename brush / delete brush - scroll to delete brush and click.
You right click on a mac track pad by clicking with two fingers.

If you want to delect more than one brush at a time you have two options.
- hold the command key down - click on each brush you wish to delete.
OR - if all of the brushes are in a row click on the first brush, hold the shift key down, then click on the last brush - it will select the whole section.
Once you have selected all the brushes you want to delete - click the delete button on the right.

11. In the preset manager you can also move the brushes around.
I moved mine so similar brushes were together, the ones I wasn't sure I would use at the bottom.
Again you can select multiple brushes by
- holding the command (ctrl) key down and then click and drag the brush/es to where you want.
- using the shift key to select a sequence, click on the first brush in the set, hold shift key, click and drag to where you want it.

12. Once you have it just the way you want you need to save it.
Click on the first brush in the set, hold the shift key down, click on the last brush in the set.
Then click on save set in the panel on the right had side of the preset manager.


13.. It will open up a box so you can navigate to where you want to save the set.

I have mine saved in ->digital scrapbooking ->photoshop brushes -> sets
Each set has a different name - I called this one SC Christmas 1 (because I already had SC Christmas - but I will combine them)
Name and click save.
14. Now one more step makes life easier - you need to make it so that photoshop can 'see' your sets brushes folder. You do this by creating an alias inside the photoshop brushes folder.
First locate the photoshop brushes folder (I am on a mac - not sure of the exact steps on windows)
Open a finder window -> Click on applications in the left hand pane  -> double click icon to open (I have photoshop cc but it works the same for all versions)
Inside there should be a folder marked presets -> click on presets folder to open.

In the presets folder click on the brushes folder to open.

Once the brushes folder is own you want to open a new finder window.

You do that by selecting file -> new finder window from the top of your screen (when you are in the finder)
In the new finder window navigate to where you saved your photoshop brushes set (so mine was: digital scrapbooking -> photoshop brushes -> sets)
Right click on the 'sets' folder (Remember you can right click on a mac track pad by clicking with two fingers)
Scroll down through the options to 'make alias' and click.

It will create an alias in the current folder.


You simply drag and drop that alias into the brushes folder (in your version of photoshop.)

And all the sets that you have in your digital scrapbooking sets folder will be visible in photoshop.
You only need to do this step once - because once you create a 'sets alias' in your brushes folder - photoshop can see every brushes set that you put into that folder.
but
You will probably have to resart photoshop to be able to see them.

15. So how does this help me?
Well if you go back to the earlier screen shot of the brush preset picker - and click on the wheely thing.

all your sets will be visible.  (you can see I have set up sets that contain days of the week months of the year, and I have all the photoshop default sets too.)
You can just click on whichever set you want to bring up.
It will come up with this little box

click ok and it will replace the brush set.
If I decide that I want to work with a different brush set - say the AE christmas brush set (I set it up following the same procedure) - all I have to do is go back into the brush picker, click the wheely thing and select AE christmas brushes and it will replace the SC BRUSHES with my AE christmas sets.