Create a One-of-a-Kind Mother’s Day Gift with Blurb Books-Giveaway

Have you run out of ideas for Mother’s Day gifts? Blurb Books offers a great solution. The company’s bookmaking website allows you to create your own personalized books. Use them for Mother’s Day, birthdays, Christmas presents, wedding gifts or make one for yourself! The website makes it incredibly easy for anyone to create their own works of art. Customize photo or wedding books, cookbooks, notebooks, or even business books with one of three bookmaking options.

blurb baby bookChoose Bookify online and make your book in a matter of minutes. Blurb’s easy to follow steps make it a breeze; simply pick your size, style, and pictures and Blurb will do the rest. You can upload pictures from seven different places including your computer and your Facebook profile. Choose Auto Create and Blurb will place your photos in the book from oldest to newest. Or decide on the order yourself and simply drag and drop the pictures into place!

I don’t like to download anything onto my computer unnecessarily and I’m very picky about what I do download, but Blurb’s BookSmart downloadable bookmaking software is safe and secure. It downloads in seconds and allows you to add a little extra personalization to your book. You can easily design templates, change fonts styles and colours and arrange pictures and text to your own liking.

Blurb’s last option gives you full creative control. Create your book with PDF files and upload it to Blurb when you’re done. I created my book using the BookSmart download and it worked like a charm. The program’s easy to follow steps were very helpful and I loved the fact that it let me save my work so that I could work around a fussy or hungry baby. Best of all, even if you do forget to save, there is an auto-save feature that automatically saves your work as you create it so that you will never have to have that sinking feeling that comes from working for hours and then losing it all due to a power outage or your toddler hitting the power button!

blurb cookbookI didn’t know how some of my pictures would print, but Blurb has even thought of that! If your picture is too big or will look distorted once it has printed, Blurb will notify you with a small exclamation mark and correct it to the appropriate size. All in all, this was an amazing (and easy) tool to unleash my creative side.

If you want to have a chance to see how easy creating with Blurb Books truly is, today is your lucky day! Blurb is offering one lucky Mommy Kat and Kids reader a $50 gift certificate to create their own personalized book. To enter, just leave a comment about what type of book you would create with Blurb!

Create a book for yourself, your kids or your family and friends at http://www.blurb.com/. Prices start at just $ 3.95 for an eBook or $5.95 for a printed version, so the books are affordable for any budget. Now you can easily create a timeless, personal keepsake that will remain a treasured item for your family for decades.

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Blurb Book Publishing-Review and Giveaway

According to some studies, the second most popular New Year’s Resolution is to publish a book. Almost everyone has something to say that they want to share with others, but the actual publishing process can be quite lengthy, stressful and ultimately unsatisfying, especially if you just want to create a special keepsake for yourself or your family. So for a truly professional presentation of your memories or ideas, what options do you have?

blurb book assortmentBlurb was designed especially for this purpose. This unique book publishing website offers an incredible publishing experience that lets absolutely anyone create a high quality, professional book in a variety of formats. I recently received a $50 gift code so that I could test out the Blurb process for myself and my mind was full of ideas.

Blurb allows users to publish their books in three different ways to suit different users. PDF to Book gives professional users full creative reign over the bookmaking process, offering blank Adobe InDesign templates for great results. Those with a desire to quickly and easily create professional photo books may prefer the online Bookify process. Finally, the easy-to-use Blurb BookSmart software lets users upload photos and add text to a variety of different customizable templates for a fabulous professional look.

I downloaded the Blurb BookSmart software and sat down to create a book. Deciding what kind of book to create was my biggest challenge and I toyed around with quite a few ideas. If I would have had months to prepare, I think I would have created a cookbook of favourite family recipes complete with photos to share with my family. But I knew that hunting down all the recipes I wanted to include would take lots of time, so I decided to save my family cookbook creation for another day.

Then, the Qu’Appelle Valley flooded and Lumsden shut down the main road into the town to help decrease the flood risk. My husband and I had gone out on a drive to take pictures of the flooding in various parts of our valley, and I decided to take the pictures and turn them into a photo book about the flooding of the Qu’Appelle Valley.

I chose the photo book template and when I did, I learned that I could add text to the photos on various pages. I decided to find some meaningful quotes about the environment and add them to some of the pages in the book to add interest. I had so much fun playing around with different layout and fonts and when I was finally done, I had a 30-page book full of pictures and quotes. The final step after proofreading the book carefully was to upload the book to the Blurb website and place my order. The entire process had been very easy and I was so pleased with how great the pages looked.

Uploading the book was the longest part of the process but there was no need to sit at the computer while the book uploaded so I simply read a book for half an hour or so until the upload was complete. Then I placed my order and waited for my book to arrive.

When the book got to the house, I couldn’t wait to take a look. The professional binding and high-quality paper made the book look just wonderful and I was so proud of how professional the finished product was. The last time that the river flooded to this extent was in 1974 and I think it’s so cool that I will have a reminder of the flooding we faced in 2011 in the coming years for us to look back on.

blurb a world of water book by meBlurb has templates for much more than just photos and can be used to create books ranging from full-length novels to yearbooks. The Blurb BookSmart software makes creating the book so easy with the customizable templates. They even have templates for cookbooks, so I have a feeling my family cookbook is still in the future!

Whether you want to turn your blog into a book (and yes, there’s a template for that) or create a photo tribute to your child’s baby years, Blurb will let you create a book that is beautiful and professional with ease. Why not give it a try and create your own special masterpiece?

Buy It: To create and purchase your own Blurb book, visit the website today

Win It: One lucky reader is going to win a $50 gift certificate from Blurb

To Enter (mandatory): Visit Blurb and tell me what kind of book you would make if you won

Bonus Entries:

· Like Mommy Kat and Kids on Facebook
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Giveaway ends 11:59 pm CST on June 15, 2011. Open to US and Canada

Disclaimer: The product/s mentioned above were provided free of charge from the company or PR firm for the purposes of this review. Opinions expressed belong to Mommy Kat and Kids and are NOT influenced in any way. Please view full Terms of Use and Policies