My apologies for not writing all week. I've been preoccupied with finishing a family photo book for my mom and uncles for Christmas. I've been working on it for over a year in fits and spurts. During a visit home early this year, I spent days scanning in all of the old family photos and documents. Late at night or early in the morning, with the help of lots of coffee, I've been working on the layout. This past October my wife and I went with my mom to Italy to visit our relatives and I was able to scan in photos that my Italian uncle had from his mother. It was especially lovely to discover a photo of my grandmother Rose and her sister Millie as a children in a formal photo with their parents (my grandmother is the girl on the far right). So far there are 64 pages. And this is only volume one. My mom is in the process of finalizing her genealogy research. So the next book will feature many of these photos which mainly focus on our Italian lineage, plus her father's French and German relatives and an extended family tree. I'll also add the old documents from my grandmother and great-grandmother and the Ellis Island ship records. I can't wait to share the books with my cousins. I'll tell you the story of how we recently found our Italian relatives in a post to come soon.
In case you want to make your own coffee table book for Christmas, go to blurb.com. That's what I'm using to print. They have a range of sizes and prices and your book prints in about ten days. And now they feature a PDF upload possibility, so you can lay out your book in InDesign, convert it to a PDF and upload the PDF to print. Be sure to download their InDesign mechanical template for the size book you're creating and read their file requirements first. If you don't have professional publishing software, you can always use their software to do your layout. I read that blurb uses the same printer that Mac uses to make photo books. But blurb is about a third of the price. Another good place to self publish books is lulu.com, but I prefer blurb's site.
Well, I'm going to put on another pot of espresso so I can finish. Have a great weekend!
P.S. Happy Birthday Rosalie!
1 comments:
quite an accomplishment - very awesome.
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