Need help creating an autograph book...

[mommy2paris]

Looking for some advice / designs on creating an autograph book. I have seen tons of great pics of books that people have put together. But, I am cluessless as where to start!

I think that I have seen some that were printed on 4x6 cards, and then you can also put a pic of the child with the character, on the opposite page of an album?

Is there an existing thread with several characters already created? Would I then just request a personalized cover?

Do you find it better to have decorated cards with the character info already on them?
What if I come across a character I don't have a "page" for?
Do you usually end up with a ton that you don't get signed? I guess we could always hold them off until our next trip...

Last year our dd 2 1/2 was so scared of the characters... She is talking about our upcoming trip, and seems like she wants to try interacting with a few characters, and I thought this would be a good way.
If she doesn't, there's always our next trip!

Anyway, thanks for any help you can offer, and sorry for all the questions!

 

[jtanddolly]

I made an autograph book for a friend of mine and I'm taking one in December. She used the book to get her 4 year old excited about meeting the characters. She showed her child the individual pictures and the child told her mom which ones she wanted to meet. I saw recently on this website were a family got 60 autographs during their last visit. You can get as many as you want...it just depends on how much time you want to devote to meeting characters versus seeing shows and riding rides. You may just work on seeing characters at character meals.

There are sooo many great designers that have created wonderful autograph pages. Here are just a few:

http://s226.photobucket.com/albums/dd181/Chaos1Cent/?start=0
http://s345.photobucket.com/albums/p379/ljcollins_2008/
http://www.4shared.com/dir/5978989/a06aa930/Natalies_DISigns.html

Also look for Heather and AreWeThereYet as they have autograph pages as well.

I copied each page and put them into a Word document. Go to file then page setup and set the pages to 4x6. Also set the margins to .3. You may need to change the picture size. You can do this by clicking on the picture, then click on format, next click picture and size and set the height to 3.55 the length will automatically adjust itself. I buy cardstock at Wal-Mart and cut it down to 4x6 and print the autograph pages on those. You can get three 4.6 cards from an 8.5x11 sheet of cardstock. You can buy precut white cardstock but you save money by doing it yourself.

I think I ended up with 236 pages in all. I have individual blank cards for autographs of characters that I don't have cards for so that I can go back and add the characters picture and name if needed. If you don't want to do individual pages for each character. There are specific pages that you can use for each park and you can print multiple of those on 4x6 pages, or just print multiple copies of the castle and have the characters sign that page. I think the park autograph pages are on ljcollins link. I personally like the characters picture and name on the cards to help me remember who they were and match them with pictures that I take.

One other hint. Printing at home can use a lot of ink and be expensive so decide before you start to copy all of the pages if you want the simpler pages or the more detailed pages for autographs. Natalie' have fewer pictures on each page and use a lot less ink than some of the other autograph pages. Good luck!

 

[mommy2paris]

Thank you times a million!
This is exactly what I needed to know!
I can't wait to get started!!

 

[MJAJmom]

Creating your own autograph book is a lot of fun, but I will also admit that it's a lot of work. The finished result is SO much better than a generic autograph book. I created one for our recent October trip. This is how I got started....

- I used 4x6 blank index cards for each page and used my printer to print the autograph pages. The PP listed several great designers to check out. I kept the pages loose, some like to bind them together in a booklet form. I decorated a clipboard for the characters to hold for signing.
- I had a stack of cards about 4inches tall, way too many than we used, with several "generic" pages for each park in case we ran into a character I did not make a page for.
- First started with character meals we scheduled and listed the characters at each place. I made a page for each character.
- Then looked at each park and what characters were available and which ones we wanted to visit with. I ended up with a 1 stack of cards for each park and 1 stack for character meals.
- After the characters signed the pages, I put them in a photo album for the boys to look at. They came out great. Here is a link to the pages and shirts I made: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1996100


A couple of suggestions if you want just a quickie book with minimal efforts:
- Buy an autograph book and decorate with Disney stickers. Put a mickey sticker for your mickey page, etc...
- Make a very small book of 10 pages or so, use a generic page with the castle on it for each page (or another generic page). very simple.

 

[chaoscent]

When I went I hadn't done any specific cards for the character meals, so I just had the regular character cards. I printed about 160 and put them in a photo book I got from the $1 store. I put them in alphabetical order to make them easier to find. I added a clip to the outside of the book so the card didn't move when the character signed. I also had a clip board. Out of the 160 cards I took down my nieces got about 20 autographs. We took pictures of them while they were getting the autographs. I put the pictures in a photo book and the autograph card right after the picture. That is what worked for me. If I went down with children again, I would do the same thing, but do more character meals and use the character meal cards. If you don't want to print the cards for all the characters you could take some generic cards. Many of the DISigners that do cards, did generic cards. Some of us do fancier (more ink) cards and others are simpler (and sometimes more elegant in their disigns). Some people pick and choose, using cards from each of us. AreWeThereYet did some beautiful MVMCP character cards.

If you like, I did a character listing of where the characters can be found and how hard/easy they are to find. If you want a copy of the listing (Word document updated in August) email me at chaoscent@verizon.net.

I understand that Bolt and a few of his friends are now appearing at DHS. I am taking a break from creating new DISigns this month due to some personal issues. However, I am sure some other DISigner will be making those cards. If you want any of my DISigns turned into a cover with a child's name, that is easy to do so just post in my thread and I will get to it over the weekend. Have fun looking at all of the great DISings.
Penny

 

[jtanddolly]

One other suggestion. If you do print a lot of cards...the easiest way to carry them around is to buy a photo album for 4x6 cards so you can slide them in and out of the pockets to get autographs.

Also don't forget to take a pen...the characters love the larger size sharpies as they are easier to hold. If you get the new retractable sharpies...you won't have to worry about the lid.

 

[chaoscent]

Here's a picture of what the $1 store photo book looked like (also recommended by jt&dolly. As you can see I put a clip on top to make it easier for the characters to sign as I would clip the card to the 4x6 book.

Penny