Making a baby book with Artifact Uprising

As parents we are constantly evolving our parenting style. There are always new things we want to do, old things we want to do better and many things we wish we hadn’t done. One thing we’ve done, maybe too well, is documenting our kids’ childhoods. Thanks to camera-phones there will be no shortage of photos for our little ones to look back on. Thanks to the cloud, there will be no shortage for their friends and future partners to ogle too. I think this is true for most families in the digital age. Still, we’d feel we were shortchanging our kids if all we left them were megabytes of data swirling about anonymous servers. We retain a fondness for real things and with every baby we’ve felt compelled to create a ‘baby book’ — a real, actual, tactile album with prints from the important moments in their first year. (I still have the baby book my mom made for me and the kids and I love looking through it!) For Wilkie, we’ve selected Artifact Uprising and their beautiful The Story of You Baby Book.

Back when Easton was a baby, baby books were complicated. First you had to get the digital photos off your camera or phone–not so straightforward in 2005. Then there was the editing, cropping and color correcting—good luck if you didn’t know a bit of Photoshop. If you got this far you had to save the files in the right format and get them onto a drive or disc of some sort. Then off to the print shop to order 5 x 7s, glossy or matte. Before you got your pictures back you had to find the right album, buy the photo corners or a glue stick, and a good pen for your musings. Then you just needed to dedicate a dozen or so hours penning your heartfelt comments or observations. Mercifully a mother of one has a lot more time than a mother to five, so Easton has a baby book.

Cut to 2017 and somehow we’re still having babies! : ) Thankfully cameras, photo editing and printing have improved massively. And thanks to Artifact Uprising, making a gorgeous baby book for Wilkie is almost too easy. For his book we chose the olive green fabric with gold foil. The book itself is solid, bound with high quality hard covers and nice paper within. The design and layout are refined, not trendy, giving the album a timeless quality which I think is ideal as one of the main reasons to make this is for Wilkie to enjoy it 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Beyond its good looks, The Story of You is easy. It came with everything I needed to complete Wilkie’s book— including a pretty pen and the 2-way tape for adhering the photos – plus page headings and well considered sections to help me organize my photos and thoughts. I love the little prompts, which are there to help guide you towards documenting the everyday moments rather than typical milestones.   Two sets of Everyday Prints in the 3.25” x 3.25” square format are also included with each book — this works especially well if you’ve been taking photos for Instagram and it still looks neat even if not.

Wilkie’s birth and his first four months are now beautifully documented, with plenty of pages for all the fun to come. We’re so pleased to have this lovely keepsake and only wish we could have a do-over on the first four albums. 😉

If you’d like to create your own book, you can now receive a 10% discount with code SMXAU17 (valid through August 21st).

This post has been sponsored by Artifact Uprising, and all words and images are my own. We are proud to partner with this wonderful company.