autograph books

[luvdmouse]

Does anyone know if they still are selling the old royal blue autograph books at WDW? I was hoping they would get a new autograph book out. I am trying to find somewhere online to buy them before we get there. Any ideas?

[amw]

I remember reading on another board that they now had gold 50th ones -- a little more expensive than the plain ones. The trouble was keeping them in stock. Maybe someone who has been recently will be able to answer if they're currently available. :confused3

[Good Ol Gal]

sorry I can't help here.. I make my own autograph books now.

[trayletha]

OP - you can get them here http://laughingplacestore.com/Category.asp?RC=520&r=aw-autograph

sorry I can't help here.. I make my own autograph books now.

Me too! DD helps and its a kinda of "getting ready to go thing" we decorate our Mousekeeping envelopes too! Do you do them character by character?

[Good Ol Gal]

Me too! DD helps and its a kinda of "getting ready to go thing" we decorate our Mousekeeping envelopes too! Do you do them character by character?

Yep.. we pick the characters that we will most likely, and want to see. It was alot of work, but WELL worth it! I had a blast doing it, the kids got a lot of attention from the characters b/c of them, and I got lots of compliments.

[Feralpeg]

They sell the little blue autograph books with the fab five on the cover at World of Disney at DTD for $6. They are usually somewhere around the checkout counters.

[Ardenne]

I'd love to see some pics from those of you who made your own, and some instructions if you did something unique -- that sounds like so much more fun than just buying one! My kids just love making things, especially if it's something they'll get to use later. (We just did some painted tshirts last week, in fact.)

[trayletha]

Can't do pictures cause I'm at work right now (shhh) but this year in the scrapbook area of Wal-Mart I found the cutest spiral bound books with foam covers. They were only about $6 and about 6x6. Prior years we used books with paper covers from Michael's, spiral bound and about 5x8. - Then all you need are some pretty paper and stickers, even if you can't find a picture/sticker of the character you want to do the page for - improvise. I used penguin stickers for a Mary P. page and teacup stickers for The Mad Hatter. DD and I have so much fun.

[ScoJo15]

I will post some pictures when I get home, but my daughter and I have had a blast making her autograph book before each trip. We bought some pastel copy paper from Staples. Then we went on the disney clip art site and downloaded tons of clip art for the characters who we wanted to make pages for. Then I used Publisher to set up a template that basically has the characters name & three or four pieces of clip art on a page. We'd design each page and save it. Then we would print them all out. We cut the paper to be about 6 X 9 and bought some heavy cardstock to use for a cover. I ripped the back off of a legal pad and used that for a back. Then we hole punched the pages and put in three ring binder rings at the top.

It all probably sounds confusing but I'll post pictures if you'd like.....I even still have the templates saved if anyone is interested.

Also, the personal pages get a TON of attention from the characters..we've had numerous times where the character would hold the book up and show everyone, or jump up and down in excitement when they see themselves in the book....one time at CRT, Cindy and Snow White sat with my daughter and looked at each page! They even helped tell her where she could see some of the characters.

I highly recommend making your own!

[Feralpeg]

Trayletha, I just wanted to say how adorable I think the little girl is in your signature!

[megan4777]

I am hoping to make DD an autograph book but I'm not very creative and definately not artistic (a stick figure doesn't have 3 arms??) I would love to see pictures and any ideas anyone can give to help me.

[bigmac5]

I was also hoping to make one. I was thinking of buy a cheap autograph book--say at WalMart or dollar store and put stickers on it. However I havent found any autograph books yet. Any one able to buy a cheap one? Any other ideas?

[trayletha]

Trayletha, I just wanted to say how adorable I think the little girl is in your signature!

Thank you - she's my joy. :cloud9:

bigmac - see my earlier post - the spiral bound books at Wal-Mart are pretty good. Just some stickers and your good to go.

[Joanna71985]

The blue books are $6.95. Then there are the princess photo autograph books and the new gold photo autograph books. They are about $10 each. The good thing about them is that there are spots for pictures on 1 side and the autograph on the other. The bad thing is that there are only about 20 spots. So if you want to see a lot of characters, they won't all fit. The blue book can fit at least twice that many. So it's good for a lot of autographs.

[kissafrog]

We made autograph books for our boys, and they love them! When we went 3 years ago, I bought plain white mini photo albums, the size that hold 1 4x6 photo per page. We used colored index cards for the autographs, and glued clip art and stickers to them. Once signed, they went on the right hand side, and a photo of ds with the character went on the left. For the cover, I just used print shop and clip art to make a page with their name and the date of our trip, and a disney pic, then covered it with clear contact paper. You could probably make these a lot fancier with all of the cool scrapbooking supplies available now. The only downside to these was trying to pull out the correct card while holding onto a ds that wants to run instead of stand in line! :rolleyes: My oldest was only 3 1/2 that trip, but he still remembers things about it when he looks at his book. He also added his postcards and other paper-type treasures to the book, and gets it out to look at and talk about every few weeks.

For our upcoming trip, we found inexpensive spiralbound index card books (3/1.00). They have a colored plastic cover with a clear pocket. We made a picture with characters and the trip date for the pocket with the Disney magic artist deluxe cd. We have a digital camera now, and I plan on printing pics of them with the characters to glue in on the opposite page from the signatures. We might fancy them up with stencil borders and stickers, cut the edges of the picture and cards with the decorator scissors, it's up to the boys how much they want to do. I'm hoping these will be easier to use, because they're smaller (3.5x5) and not loose papers like we used last time.

I highly recommend making your own book. With all the computer art programs, scrapbook supplies, stickers, digital cameras and whatnot, it's pretty easy to make something cool even if you're not artistic. The big plus is, they really had fun making them, and loved having their own 'book' when the trip was through. :earsgirl:

[needAcruise]

I went to my local dollar store to get blank books so I could put stickers on them. There were all sorts of notebooks out due to the new shcool year.

Lo and behold, there were Disney Princess notebooks! :banana:

They came in all sorts of sized. Official DISNEY princess notebooks! For a dollar! I bought two on them. They were 4x6, spiral bound, 60 pages and hardcovered. The spiral was huge (about 1-1/2 in diameter), perfect for a 3 year old princess: to clip a pen into.

My only reservation is that that pages had lines (I prefer unlined) and the paper was kinda flimsy (but it is notebook paper after all). Maybe I'll have the characters sign every other page.

And the idea of personalized character pages is great!.

I love the dollar store. They have all sorts of hidden gems. (Like a over the door shoe organizer.) Vive le dollar store! :cheer2:

[joanchris]

I had thought of making our own books for our October trip, but then it seemed like too much. So, I found some great disney ones on Ebay, ordered 2 (one was more expensive than the other and came with a pen), total, incl. shipping was only $24. Anyhow, after reading the suggestions here, I figure maybe we'll spruce them up a bit, with special pages for their fav characters, using scrap book supplies to add character names, maybe some stickers etc. These were spiral bound and I liked that idea so they could hand the book with the page open to the right one, and attach a pen/marker with a long string maybe....
Great ideas here!
Joan

64 days til WDW

[latuders]

What exactly is a mousekeeping envelope. I am going in nov. It will be my kids 1st time there. This sounds like something they may enjoy making!!!
:



Me too! DD helps and its a kinda of "getting ready to go thing" we decorate our Mousekeeping envelopes too! Do you do them character by character?[/QUOTE]

[trayletha]

What exactly is a mousekeeping envelope.

Mousekeeping envelopes are the envelopes for the housekeeping staff's tips. We decorate them with stickers, drawings, and appreciative sayings (always leave room for special thanks for special effort). I also prefill them so I don't have to worry about forgetting to do that. :Pinkbounc

[Dizneydaz]

I'm sure others have done this put I'll post it her as another good idea for autographs. Last January I took copies of character pixs I took with my DD-5 on previous trip (Sept. 04) and had the characters sign "their" pixs. I had all the princesses princess: at the Storybook Bfast do this and they seemed to enjoy looking at their photos. (Amazingly even though I had taken the pix about 4 months before, none of the same CM were there. My DD didn't notice that the princesses signing the pix looked a little different from their photo! :cool1: )

It turned out to be an even better idea than I thought since we lost our WDW autograph book a few days after arrival. I think it fell out of the stroller when I folded it up to ride on the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch. Even though I immeadiately filed a lost and found report and visited and called Lost and Found nearly every day, the book was gone (I can't believe someone would find and keep someone elses book, but I think that's what happened) About 2 weeks later a package arrived in the mail-was it the old book (with several years worth of autographs?-NO-even better-it was a brand new book completely filled out with autographs! There are autographs of characters I've never seen in the parks. Nothing will replace the old book with special messages to my DD on her 5th birthday, but the fact that a CM (at Lost and Found )took the time to send us a new book makes that book extra special too :cheer2: :cheer2:

I plan on taking copies of last Jan. pix with us this September and have them signed too. I take along a small clipboard to hold the photos and it works well. I also bring a Sharpie marker.

Oh, one more thing, something else I did last Sept. was have the princesses sign birthday cards I bought, before we left home, for my DD upcoming birthday. :bday: We were leaving WDW a few days before her birthday. I made sure I mailed the cards before we left and she was so excited to receive them when we returned home. Jasmine in the MK thought the idea was great! (she hadn't seen a bday card with herself on it before). The CM in the Princess Room at Toontown were very helpful distracting my DD while Ariel signed her card-she even kissed :love: the card and left a lip print. I plan on having some cards signed this year too and since we will be there for her birthday, I'll have them "delivered" to our room. I've picked up a few already with characters on them (princesses and Mickey, of course)

42 days and counting!

[trayletha]

Oh, one more thing, something else I did last Sept. was have the princesses sign birthday cards I bought, before we left home, for my DD upcoming birthday. :bday: 42 days and counting!

I LOVE :lovestruc this idea - just added it to my to do list. Thank you.

[Twinglezabe3]

WOW!! You guys sound so creative. I am definately doing the mini photo album autograph book. The signing of the birthday cards is so clever, I will be doing that also. What about the pics of your books. Please send them, I really want to see what you all have done. Thanks for all your info. :cheer2:

[Kayla's Mom]

I just purchased a memory book kit for 3.19 (reg. 7.99). It is 6 x 6, foam covered with heavy white pages. (20 pages) It comes with 200 foam stickers and 2 glitter pens. Perfect for making autograph books! :flower:

[LaDonna]

I just purchased a memory book kit for 3.19 (reg. 7.99). It is 6 x 6, foam covered with heavy white pages. (20 pages) It comes with 200 foam stickers and 2 glitter pens. Perfect for making autograph books! :flower:
ooh, I hope they have some next week when I'm by my local Joahnn's! I'm thinking definatly gonna need something sturdy otherwise it won't last too long in my kiddos hands :rotfl: Hmm, maybe I shouldn't wait till next week :teeth:

[pezheadval]

I'd love to see some pics of the autograph books you've made, too.
We have always used the ones from Disney World, but I would like to make one for our next trip.

[wendypooh]

I'm getting ready to start making my DS's autograph book........ I'd love to see some of your photo's, and an idea or photo of what your mousekeeping envelopes look like.

Thanks........... :earboy2:

[trayletha]

Here is a link (I hope will work) for pictures of our last book. :)
http://www.msnusers.com/Disbooks

The pictures are on the right hand side. I hope they are helpful.

[LaDonna]

Those are great! Thanks for sharing :earsgirl:
Hmm, not I just have to decide which characters to put in the book :rotfl: Guess I should ask kiddos first though :rotfl2: Guess I could keep a couple of blanks pages just in case :teeth:

[luvdmouse]

Thanks for all the great ideas. I'll have plenty of time to make three books before our trip next March. I'm going to try and make a few for our best friends leaving this Saturday. We'll see how they turn out.

[Shelebeen]

I made our autograph pages... they didn't become "books" until we returned and printed out some photos to go along with them.

I created them in photoshop with clip art and fancy fonts, printed them on cardstock with my printer and then cut them out. They are 4x6 pages.. I would have preferred 5x7, but I was having a hard time finding a book to hold the 5x7's.

We brought them in a ziplock, then pulled out the ones we needed while waiting. I just put them in alphabetically... after we got to Disney, I used one of the plastic lunch boxes you get with the kids meals to store them in. We also brought a bunch of different coloured sharpies... and a clipboard (5x7 size).

I made a bunch with all the characters we figured we could end up seeing, then a bunch of blank ones with the 50th logo on them for the extras.. and I did end up using a couple of those blanks.

Worked great and all the face characters commented on them.

Here is a link to some of the ones I did....
http://www.spektrum.ca/carole/disneyautographpages.htm

[Shelebeen]

Here is a link (I hope will work) for pictures of our last book. :)
http://www.msnusers.com/Disbooks

The pictures are on the right hand side. I hope they are helpful.


Trayletha... your autograph pages are awesome! Great work

[trayletha]

Trayletha... your autograph pages are awesome! Great work

Shelbeen... Thank you and yours are so cool :cool1: . All those beautiful pictures you found and I just love those layouts, thank you for sharing them with us.

[LaDonna]

I made our autograph pages... they didn't become "books" until we returned and printed out some photos to go along with them.
I created them in photoshop with clip art and fancy fonts, printed them on cardstock with my printer and then cut them out. They are 4x6 pages.. I would have preferred 5x7, but I was having a hard time finding a book to hold the 5x7's.
Here is a link to some of the ones I did....
http://www.spektrum.ca/carole/disneyautographpages.htm

I have a question, I'm not too handy with the printer, but what color cardstock did you use? I noticed all the pics were completely colored, I'm wondering if all that color will be too much strain on my printer, or will it use a whole cartridge of colored ink????
Thanks for any help :)

[Shelebeen]

I have a question, I'm not too handy with the printer, but what color cardstock did you use? I noticed all the pics were completely colored, I'm wondering if all that color will be too much strain on my printer, or will it use a whole cartridge of colored ink????
Thanks for any help :)


I used white cardstock. I wanted them all coloured differently.. but I guess you could go to a scrapbooking store and buy different colours of cardstock - just not sure how the colours of the clip art would show up against them.

I do digital scrapbooking and print my 8x10 pages on photo paper all the time, so I guess I don't worry too much about the colour cartridges.. just one of the costs of my hobby I suppose. My printer has 5 different cartridges, so if I run out of a colour, I just replace it not the whole colour thing.

I am sure this project cost WAY more then buying an autograph book would, but I enjoy doing this stuff and it was worth it to us.