Now that Christmas is over I can share the gifts I created for my parents! I wrote and illustrated children’s books about my grandmothers.
I saw this idea earlier in the year and knew it would be the perfect gift for my mother who loves children’s books. It is also a wonderful way to share your ancestors’ stories over and over to your children.
First I had to decide what to write about them. Including their births and marriage/love stories was a given. I also wanted to include some characteristics or attributes they had and how they showed those.
Once I figured out what each page would say I was able to come up with ideas for the illustrations. I used Adobe Illustrator and based the illustrations off of photographs which I included in the back of the books. If you don’t know how to do the illustrations you could definitely just use photographs instead.
For each page I created a 10×10 inch image making sure there was room around the picture so it wouldn’t get cut off. The same for the words. You could just type them in with the company I used but because I wanted the attributes to stand out I created a jpeg with a colored rectangle around the characteristic. See the examples below.
The board books were ordered from Pint Size Productions. The quality is top notch! The colors are exact and the pages thick. I used the Advanced Board Book template because it had 24 pages but there are other options for number of pages and sizes. Once you choose a template you can upload your pictures, type in words, change font and font colors, etc. making the book just how you want it.
Here’s what the template looked like before adding my pictures.
And here’s what it looked like after adding my pictures.
The website is pretty intuitive to use but they do have helpful videos if you run into a snag. Hint: If you can, order at least 10 books. It brings the price of each book down by at least $5. My books ended up being $28 each. A little expensive for a board book but not expensive at all for a nice heirloom gift!
Now if you care to read about my grandmothers scroll through all the photos. The books about my grandfathers are being created for my parents’ birthdays in March and April.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Aren’t my grandmothers wonderful? I can’t wait to read these books over and over to my children. Hopefully they’ll come to love Yaya and Guelita as much as I do and feel their love as well.
These are amazing!! Thank you for sharing. This project is going on my project list for this year. What a beautiful way to share family history.
What a lovely project. Pardon my ignorance but what does it mean that yaya prepared more than 25,000 names for temple work?
Way to Pursue Your Passions, Montse! Very Well Done! I created some genealogy books (binders) for my sisters for their birthdays, this past year. I don’t have much info, and they are not members so, to make it interesting I started with their fan charts then went back four generations on our mother’s and father’s side. I included Wikipedia info on the towns they were born in, all the pics i could find, including gravestones, census records, birth, death, wedding certificates, info on the places they worked. I even found civil war draft card for one of our greats, so included some anonymous civil war pics. They really loved them, so I made some for my two sister-in-laws for Christmas. At the same time I made one for Ron. It took most of the year, and was difficult to do Ron’s. I could only work on his while he was napping or at the dentist, since we are pretty much together 24/7. This side, being members, I was able to find a whole lot more info. I even contacted Church headquarters, and was able to get their mother and father’s Patriarchal Blessings. Many more life stories were found, more journal entries, more pics, etc. According to Ron, it was the best gift I’ve ever given him, and even tho’ both his sisters are inactive, one gave me a “million” thanks, and the other said she and her granddaughter spend hours reading life stories together. I am not as talented as you, they are not real books, just info put into binders, but well loved nonetheless!
Those are adorable! Amazing, as usual!
These two ladies left huge shoes to fill. I love them and these books and fabulous! Can’t wait to get my copy of Guelita’s book.
Wow! Simply amazing! Thank you for the idea!
I can’t express how much I LOVE these books and can’t wait to try to make them on my own. One question-would you make a tutorial or recommend a tutorial on how to create the photos and picture frames in illustrator?
I love these! Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you so much for sharing how you created your beautiful ancestor books with us. What great family history treasures!