Beeper Bebe Plushies: The Book

I am so smitten with Blurb. In fact, I would say smitten does not begin to really quantify how I feel about Blurb--perhaps obsession is more accurate. You see, I made a couple of books on Blurb last year for gifts, and now all I want to make are more Blurb books--I want to make a book about our wedding (since our wedding album consists of photos and ephemera shoved in a shoebox somewhere), a book of travel photos, a book of favorite photographs of our friends and family, a cookbook I could give as gifts, a book for each year of Beeper's life...the ideas if realized could easily empty my bank account.

And so I spent much of my holiday vacation spare time in a menage a trois of me, my computer and the Blurb bookmaking software(free to download from their site). We easily spent about 30+ hours together, pouring over photographs for the book, editing them, and laying them out in the book--then writing the text. And the end result was this: Beeper Bebe Plushies--Handmade Plushies from Secondhand Stuff.

It is a retrospective of my plushie design work since I started making them back in 2005. Not that there is any practical purpose for this book other than forcing it into the hands of people I know and making them peruse it--and also, it makes me feel all warm inside to have this nice and tidy little view into my plushie design efforts.

I organized the photos my design type: mangy menagerie, bitty bebes, babies on a stick, two-faced friends, etc. Then chose those I thought were the best representative photos of my work, and added a little text of that particular design--keeping it light and not too technical. I had this one printed hard cover, and used the premium paper option--I mean, why not when it is only a few bucks more (especially when you just like Blurb soooo much).

And I have to say, I am really, really, REALLY happy with the end result. Oh, Blurb, I love you for making my stuff look so good when bound all up together like this. I could just caress the hardcover with its sweet little dust jacket and kiss the inside book flap.

And like I mentioned, I did have my first foray with Blurb last spring when I made two hard cover books with photos of Beeper for my mum and mother-in-law for Mother's Day. Then I made a cheap little soft cover for Beeper as a birthday gift with photos of just his friends and family--goofy photos abounded here.

You can see the book is little crinkled with reading and use because Beeper loved it. And I think I only paid something like $12 for getting this book printed and it had about 40 pages (I am partial to the square book format--I like the handy size of it and its contemporary look).

The other thing about Blurb--in case you do not know--is that you can list your completed books on their website for sale---and you name the selling price. And you know what? I listed my little Plushie book out there in soft or hard cover for whomever may be interested...because, why not? You can find it here.

You can preview the first 15 pages on Blurb--mainly devoted to my Mangy Mengaerie designs--but you should know that there are a LOAD more designs in there because the book is 134 pages, for goodness sake (some would say excessive--but I would say merely obsessive about Blurb).