Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Disney Autograph Books

One of my best friends and her husband are taking their two beautiful girls to Disneyland for the first time. I was so excited that I wanted to make them something special to take on their trip. I had seen lots of people on the Cricut boards make Disney Autograph books and I was itching to give them a whirl.

I made 8.5 x 4 inch books with chipboard covers and double layered cardstock pages. I used my Bind It All to do a 1" ring binding and decorated with ribbon. The chipboard covers are layered with cardstock and the names are layered with white vinyl. You can't tell it from this picture but the names are their own covered chipboard piece separate from the cover. I used some really fun fuzzy black vinyl for the cover titles.


The picture of the covers is a little bright from the flash reflection. As an afterthought, I opted to cut a piece of transparency film for the front and back of each book to rest over the covers and protect them from wear and tear damage at the park. I went ahead and bound the transparency pieces in with the rest of the book, but they can later be cut off and removed when they return home.

Faith is 12 and Lizzie is almost 4 and I wanted their books to be uniform but different. I chose to do full body cuts for Faith's book and portrait cuts for Lizzie's book. The only exception would be the Chipmunks as I only had one style of cut for them.

After looking up lots of tips and hints about these autograph books I decided to design pages for the most prominent core Disney characters as well as 2 of the more famous Princesses & Tinkerbell and then leave 3 blank layouts in the back for other characters they may see.

One tip suggested that photo mats are not ideal to lay down as you may get a signature with a character but not a photo. Another tip was that characters who have large gloves or costumes tend to make larger signatures due to the lack of dexterity so it's best to have a decent sized place for them to sign. From those tips, I decided to design each character's layout with a cut and a large white 'signing' space on the right and their character name and a large open space for a possible picture on the left. I opted not to do the photo mats so it wouldn't look odd if no photo was taken but has room for a picture if they are able to get one.

(I ended up using ALOT of vinyl on this project. The mickey heart and block name are covered in a sparkly red vinyl but it looks black because of the angle of the picture. It's really cute in person -- I wish I'd taken a close up picture hehe.)












These were SO much fun to make and I was really pleased with how they turned out. My friend picked them up tonight and I've been told the girls loved them. In fact, Faith already called to tell me how "awesome" they are. Hopefully they'll be able to get a few signatures. If not then they can stick some fun pictures from the trip in there and just have a fun little momento. Either way, I hope they enjoy them.

Again, these were just a blast to make! Thanks for looking!! ~Jenn

For Cricut Users:
The front cover titles were done with Mickey Font & Stone Script. The chipboard name pieces were done with Mickey Font. All character cuts and character names are from Mickey & Friends, Happily Ever After and Tinkerbell & Friends.

For the characters and names, I used textured black cardstock (without white core) and colored cardstock and vinyl for the layers. I'll be honest, vinyl was truly my best friend on this project because it makes nice clean cuts and makes the small pieces SO much easier to work with.