Superbook and Blurb | Northwest Arkansas Photographer

As you may imagine,
I take a lot of photos of my family.
1000s of photos a year, actually.

For the longest time, I had a huge problem.
The problem was that I had so many lovely, gorgeous, fantastic
photos of my loves
but only so much wall space.
I wasn't printing out nearly as many of my photos as I wanted because
I just didn't have the space for them.
There was a huge fear
that all of these photos would just live
on the computer forever.

This past year I was starting to get major anxiety that something would
happen to these photos before I printed them
and a huge chunk of my family history would be gone.

I decided that the best way to ease my fears
would be to make a photobook.
I had created a couple of photobooks from various companies in the past,
but nothing over 20 pages.
I knew that ideally I would want as many photos in the same book as possible.
I wanted a book that could span years.

That is where Blurb comes in to the picture.
(Haha, picture.)

Blurb is a company that prints books for pretty much anything you can imagine.
Photo books and text books
and now even ebooks.
They are also a company that can print up to 440 pages.

Yeah.
440 pages!!

Other photobook companies had a cap of 100 or 200 pages.
400+ pages floored me.
I knew that Blurb was going to be the place that I
used for this project.

Blurb has a couple of different options when it comes to how to make your book.
For this project, which I lovingly called the Superbook,
I decided to go with their BookSmart software.
I just downloaded it onto  my laptop
and worked on the book when I had free moments.
This is also different than a lot of companies.
Instead of being tied to the internet,
I could work on it where ever I had my laptop.
It would save on my computer and then would upload to the Blurb
site when I was finished.

It did take me a couple of months to put together my Superbook.
This is mainly because it contains photos that span
2003-2010.
That's a TON of photos.
And they were all over the place, too, on different harddrives, so it took
a lot of work just to get them all in one place.
Some of them weren't edited, either, so I had to do that as well.
My next photobook project will be much easier
since I have a better organization system for my current personal photos.
(One folder for each year containing a folder for each month.)

I was SO giddy waiting for this book to arrive.
I probably did a facebook status about it
a million times.
And this morning, as I not so patiently waited for it to hit my doorstep,
I posted another million status updates about it.
:)

Finally, finally, it arrived.

I ripped opened the box,
sat down,
and spent the next several minutes going over
all 418 pages.

Yeah.
418 pages.

My Superbook ended up being an
8x10 hardcover book
with 418 pages and
spanned years 2003-2010.

Well, actually there are a couple of photos from 2011 in there,
but not too many.

Most pages that I did were photo collage pages so I could get as many
photos in one book as possible.

Some were full page photos.

I even had a couple of full spreads where the
photo spanned two pages.
I didn't take a photo of one of those, though,
but I will try and add one later.

I'm so thrilled with it.
The paper is nice.
The colors are great.

I'm in love.

I haven't decided if I'm going to combine 2011 and 2012 together into one book
or if I'll print each year separately.
I do know that I will be printing one
big photobook a year
as a family keepsake.

And I can't wait!

Maybe I'll do a 12x12 next time!

Are you getting the bug to make your own Blurb book?
Do it!
Right now until the 10th, Blurb is offering 20% off your order!
Just enter the code RUDOLPH at checkout.

Yay!

Another fun thing I like to do with Blurb books is to print off
smaller soft cover books.

These are perfect for my Instagram photos.
(Aryah decided to jump in the photo.)

And I also did one of some of my favorite self-portraits
from my 365 portrait projects.

Please note that while all opinions on this page are my own,
I am now an affiliate for Blurb books.
This means that I receive a small commission
for blogging about Blurb and sharing their sale offers with others.

I truly, truly am in love with my Blurb book
and started my Superbook before I even was aware that
there is an afflilate program.
I decided to join because I've loved everything I've ordered from Blurb.
:)