My New ABC Book! Free template included!

So this summer I've been working on an ABC book project. I did the same project a few years ago--you can read about it here. But that was in 2010 before I was even pregnant with the twins, and our family has changed a lot since then! Time for an update! This one was also done on Blurb, and came to $30 when all finished--that was for 56 pages and shipping, soft cover. Of course, I did two pages for each letter--it would be much cheaper to just do one page per letter, but I wanted to make this something that the girls look at in church and I wanted to put all the family members in it so they can point at each person and say who they are.

To see my book, you can view it on Blurb here:

ABC Book by Realscrappy

 

And here is a thumbnail of each page!

 

 

 

In this book, I used kits from LOTS of different places! Shops used include: Gotta Pixel, Pickleberry Pop,  Scrap Matters, Cherry on Top, and Designs by Krista. My cover page is using a very old kit by Peppermint Creative.

I wanted to do more than just share the work I've done with you all--I wanted to make it something you can do too! So I have included the template that I used when I made my book. I didn't use a template at first, and ended up wasting a lot of time re-doing it later. For a project like this where every page needs to have the same spacing, fonts, etc, a template is ESSENTIAL. I have also included a second template in case you would rather just do one page per letter. It's important you use it because the margins for left and right pages are different. These templates are in .psd format. To download, click on the image below.

 

**Once you have finished the layout, go to Image>Canvas Size and change it from 14x7 to 7x7. Then choose the left arrow. Save as a jpg. Undo that last action and do the same process again, only click on the right arrow and save.

**This is set for a 7x7 page, since that's the option on Blurb. If you want an 8x8 instead, just go to Image>Canvas Size and change the canvas to 16x8. Then highlight all layers and re-size to fit.

**Both above instructions are included in the step by step video at the end of this post.

For mine,  I used immediate family member as the letters, and then filled in with other words I had pictures for. Some of those letters were a real challenge, and I admit I had to set up a couple of shots to pull it off! Here is a large version of what each page basically looked like.

I picked a different kit for each page. The first page was always a very large picture, and then I added smaller ones on the second page. You could easily use the same kit and the same alpha for every page as well if that's more your style.

For the letters, in most cases I made the letters myself using Atomic Cupcake actions. You can download most of them for free on that link. You can read about using them here. Occasionally I used letters that came with the kits I used, but many kits don't come with them, or the alpha that comes with it just isn't the look I wanted.

I have created a 9-minute video that takes you through the entire process of using this template. I hope it helps! Click on the link below to view. Thank you!

Creating an ABC Book with Templates by Realscrappy.com

 

 And finally, here is the list of the words I used for each letter in my ABC book, excluding family names:

 

A - All family names! We had a lot!

B - Books, bubbles

C - Cuddle, Church, Cry, Cousins

D - Daddy, Draw

E - Eternity, Eating, Easter Eggs

F - Family, Friends, Fishing, Fireworks

G - Grin, Grandmas & Grandpas

H - Happy, Hat, Horse

I - Ice Cream, iPod, Icky

J - Jesus, Jump

K - Kisses

L - Laugh, Library, Learn

M - Mommy

N - Naked, Nurse

O - Outside, Oatmeal, Oreos

P - Peek-a-boo, Parents

Q - Quilt, Quirky

R - Ride

S - Slide, Sisters

T - Teeth, Twins, Tricycle

U - Underwear, Umbrella

V - Video, Van, Visit

W - Water, Wings, Walk, Wagon

X - Xylophone, eXciting

Y - Yucky, Yawn, Yummy

Z - Z-z-z-z, Zoo, Zebra