MDS Blog Hop - Print Products!

Hello there!  I hope you're enjoying all the fun projects on the hop so far.  Today we're focusing on print products and gift ideas so I wanted to show you a board book I created last year.

My kids are hilarious.  Really - they crack me up.  I started randomly writing down the things Andrew and Simon would say so that I could blog about it, but then I  got busy, let that blog lapse and just didn't write things down as much.  After we moved to Virginia and left our family and friends clear across the country in Utah, I started using Facebook quite a bit to keep in touch and I discovered that I could post these kid quotes pretty quickly without having to write an entire post about it.  Then I realized that it was also a great way to keep my family in the loop and they wouldn't have to feel like they were missing out on the boys' lives quite as much.

Sometimes I post quotes several times a day, so you can imagine that I've got quite a collection now.  I think the best way to preserve these precious memories is to put them all together in a book. Although I'm going to need a few volumes . . .

And here is the finished (and printed) product.
Ta Da!

I decided to go with a board book because, well . . . mostly because I just wanted to try it out.  But also because I wanted something that would be sturdy and hold up well.  I also loved that it opens flat. It's a lot easier to design in MDS because you can see the facing pages together. 

I chose a layout that would allow me to put multiple quotes together while still leaving room for artistic elements and then repeated that layout through the entire book.  It made the process so much faster because all I had to do was change papers and embellishments and add in a few pictures here and there. 

I am so happy with the quality of the book!  The pages are thinner than what you would expect from a traditional board book, but they're still heavy enough to withstand my kids.  We'll be enjoying this book for years to come!

The printing is great as well - the images are nice and clear.  It looks just the way I designed it on my computer.

Have you ever been using an embellishment in MDS and thought, "Whoa . . . that looks so pixelated! What's the deal?"  I asked about that awhile ago and one of the tech guys on MyDigitalStudio.net got back to me.  He assured me that things wouldn't look that way when they're printed.  They did that on purpose to keep MDS running smoothly.  Higher quality images will slow things down.  I don't really understand all the ins and outs, but he was right - it looks awesome in print!

I have loved these books so much that I've reprinted them for gifts.  The only thing I had to change was the cover.  My parent's and in-law's books say "My grandkids say the darndest things" and my sister's says, "My nephews say the darndest things".  That's the beauty of digital scrapbooking - you can create a scrapbook once and print it as many times as you like.  How's that for a time saver? You'll be crossing people off your list left and right.  Boom.  Christmas shopping done!

Let's keep this party going!  Cindy is your next stop.  Enjoy!

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