Disney Autograph Books

Last year when we went to Disney I had talked to the kids a bit about what we were going to do and see.  I had talked about Pin Trading and seeing Characters.  Both of my kids didn't really understand the Pin Trading thing and I figured that neither would care for autographs...they would just rather meet them and get their photos with them.

Well I was wrong.  Day one at the parks and the very first thing my son did was buy a pen and autograph book with his spending money.  He purchased the blue one with the main characters on it.  Lily on the other hand didn't want signatures at all the first day (we asked her periodically throughout the day if she wanted a book) and on the morning of day 2 promptly asked us before we left for the park if she could buy her own book and pen.  She got a Tinkerbell one.  (Just a FYI, those books have less pages than the regular book, but have sleeves for photos.)  Through the rest of our trip Disney World they were on a mission to see characters and collect signatures.  Lily ran out of room in her first book and we ended up having to buy her a second book.  Ian almost filled his up (I think he has 1 or 2 pages left).

Over Christmas break I ordered the photos from our trip for their books and when adding them to the books I learned a few things....

While I like the books from Disney, they are not large enough to hold printed photos when you get home.  The standard 4inch photos are just a smidge too big for them.  The photos are also a smidge to big for those special sleeves in the Tinkerbell & Princess autograph books.  Could I crop the photos?  Sure, but I like to take photos that you do not have to crop, KWIM?  I also prefer to take vertical shots of my kids with the character instead of horizontal (because the character is so much taller than my kid most of the time).

Also when you start adding photos to the blue one and fill it, the book no longer closes....all those photos make it too thick.

Disney does sell a larger book (for more money), but there are about as many pages as in the Tinkerbell one.  You see my kids do not care if they already saw Stitch once at Magic Kingdom, the one in Animal Kingdom is a different one and they want to get his autograph and photo, too.  (Stitch is Ian's FAVORITE) Which is totally fine by me.  

With all that said...I was on a mission this trip to come up with my own autograph solution.  We are going for 10days and I want my kids to have enough room for all of their prized signatures and photos.  I had come up with lots of ideas....pinned many of them on pinterest...discussed them with the kids and my husband...and this is what I came up with.

I purchased two Pro Art 5 1/5in by 8in spiral bound sketch books (similar to the one pictured below) at a local craft store with coupons - the paper in sketch books are thicker than regular notebooks & there are LOTS of pages and the cover is hard.

I let the kids pick out Disney sticker packs that they would want on their book.  I tried to talk them into waiting until we got home from our trip to add the stickers (so there was less of a chance they would end up falling off), but they really wanted them on the books.  I originally had wanted to place paper under the stickers and mod podge it down, but I personally really like the way the stickers stand out on the black cover.

This is Ian's...

And the front and back of Lily's...

(I used E-6000 on the gems and puffy stickers.  I had to mod podge down Tinkerbell and the flowers on the back, otherwise they would have come up.  Lily was so impatient during the whole process...if I had to do it over I would have used paper on the back under Tinkerbell so you wouldn't see the the mod podge and the "pro art sign", but it's for a 5yr old and she is ecstatic about her new book and that is all that counts.)

On a side note....one year ago today was the day we arrived on our Disney Vacation last year.  You can read the funny story of our arrival here. O_o

Linking to these parties, here.