Holy ArtsCow!

Yay my custom board book arrived in the mail yesterday and Holy ArtsCow, the printing quality is exceptional!  

While I was pregnant with Adam my mother-in-law showed me some poems that she had written for Mike when he was a baby.  She had always meant to create a book with them but had never gotten around to it.  The poems were terrific and a seed was planted in my mind to eventually create that book for both her and Adam.  Well I finally sat down and spent two afternoons putting together the illustrations and pages to create this wonderful book of Poems from Nana to Daddy to Adam.

Now I want to state upfront that I did not draw the pictures in this book as I did in the Christmas book for Anna.  I thought about it.  But I still don't have a tablet and when I drew those pictures with just a mouse (or even my index finger on my laptop touch pad) it took a very long time.  

The challenge with finding clipart online is that most of them have poor resolution or a huge annoying watermark across them or are inconsistent in drawing style (i.e. one is cartoonish, one is a sketch, one is a line drawing, etc).  Fortunately I'm pretty handy with Gimp and Photoshop so I could increase the pixel resolution, eliminate watermarks pretty easily, add background and details, and even alter the images to better suit the poem.  For example it didn't take long to transform that little girl with blond hair and pigtails, freckles, and long eyelashes into a little boy pilot!

However finding consistent drawing styles online was just something I had to invest time doing.  Eventually I was able to find all the pictures I wanted and then it was a matter of finding a good printing house.  I half convinced myself of turning it into a cloth book like the one for Caleb but then talked myself out of it again.  There are several websites I came across for making custom board books.  One of the most popular ones I kept reading about is pint size productions, but when I asked for a quote, not only were they pricey but their standard number of pages wasn't enough for what I needed.  

I also considered buying chunky blank board books and then printing the pages on full-page labels and creating the book that way.  Again, just didn't really do it for me.  

Finally I decided to go with a deluxe 6"x6" photo book from ArtsCow and I couldn't be happier.  The biggest challenge with actual board books was finding ones that could accommodate the number of pages for  these poems.  With ArtsCow I was actually creating a photo book with lay-flat pages (4x the thickness of regular pages) as a way to mimic a board book.  There were still some conditions to the number of pages (e.g. multiples of 4) due to how the book is constructed but it happened to work out just right for me.  I also took advantage of a free shipping promo so the total was $23.  That's not bad considering some regular board books are $8.99 + tax. There's also a 4"x 4" option which is cheaper.

Anyway for anyone considering making a custom board book, I would suggest giving ArtsCow a try if other board book companies can't meet your needs. However if anyone does find a good printing site I would love to hear about it!