Personalized Baby Board Book

I finally finished this little personalized board book for my grandbaby, Carl.  The idea came from Kimberly Petersen's post which I found here on Pinterest.

This took me far longer than I thought it would!  I had to find the photos, edit and enlarge and add text, then decoupage them all into the prepared book. I had bought two little 6" square board books years ago to alter and they worked perfectly. They had too many pages, so I just cut several out. Since the pages were glossy, I gessoed them all to give the pages some tooth for the decoupage glue to stick.

This is the cover. I was going to use duct tape for the binding but didn't want to buy a large roll for two (yes, I'm also doing one for my other little grandson) 6" strips! I found a strip of black plasticized webbing (from garage - have no idea what it's for) and this worked perfectly to glue over the spine.

Here's a peek inside the book. There is a page each for Daddy, Mommy, Grams, Pops, 3 aunts and 2 uncles, 1 cousin and both great-grandmothers.

I needed one more photo, so used our dog on the back cover.

I first tried using Photoshop Elements to create the pages, but after a few days of trial, error and lots of frustration, I simply opened a blank page in my word processing program (Pages, Mac) and dragged the photo into the page! How easy was that!  I resized it so the smallest dimension was 6" and added a text box. The text was typed in either black or white depending on the photo. Then I printed a copy on regular copy paper and cut it to fit the book page. I used Mod Podge to decoupage the photo to the book and then Mod Podged over each page to protect it from wear and tear.

I hope this will be a fun book for Carl to remember his extended family (maternal) and to put faces to names.  Drew's book is almost complete too - just need to add a few more photos.