Welcome to Cherish Bound!

1. Cherish Bound is all about helping you find, capture, and share the memories and stories of your lives.
2. Cherish Bound knows the importance of recording your stories for your family to enjoy now, and for future generations.
3. Cherish Bound offers a unique way to preserve your memories and stories - beautifully bound books that are much more than just photo books.
4. Cherish Bound offers a full line of story "helps"; workbooks, calendars, journals, and more!
5. Cherish Bound specializes in easy, fun, fast ways to record your memories.
6. Cherish Bound offers one-on-one service: a personal consultant to help in any way you need. You don't have to be an expert to make beautifully bound memories - if you need help, I'm there.
7. I offer workshops, leading you personally, step-by-step through the writing and creative process. You won't be on your own.
8. Cherish Bound is dedicated to helping bright, fun, energetic women (and men) have successful businesses of their own - it's the best home-based business model I've seen. I'm looking for people interested in being on the Utah team - a team that will grow faster than you can blink an eye! Come on... be part of something incredible!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween...

It's Halloween - such a fun time of year, with lots of wonderful memories for me. I loved dressing my children up and going trick-or-treating with them. On my family blog, I've posted some great pictures of my kids throughout the years. Hope you take a minute to go and visit... MY STORY MOMENTS.

Don't forget that it's also a great time to record those fun Halloween celebrations. One of the consultants on my team, Jamie Robinson, has a customer who is doing this wonderful Halloween book for her grown kids, called something like "A Halloween Spooktacular". She is including memories from all of her children, pictures, and Halloween stories. I can't wait to see it. Even if you don't do a book dedicated completely to Halloween, though, you can still add pictures of your kids in their childhood books. Here are some of mine...



Don't forget that using a Story Starter makes telling your story so much easier. Our FALL story starter has some great questions about Halloween and other Fall celebrations.
As always, if you need more ideas, or help on those important books, contact me at kara (at) cherishbound (dot) com, or call me (801)360-4666.

Happy Haunting!


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY - A GATHERING

Some pictures of the Cherish Bound Gathering I hosted at my home last night...




We had lots of fun - if you are interested in hosting a gathering in your home, please contact me at kara (at) cherishbound (dot) com.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Christmas Gifts - Tribute to Someone Dear

Idea #2 - A Tribute

I know I've blogged about this kind of book before, but I just finished a book that I'm so excited about. I submitted it last week and it's on it's way here right this minute, so I don't have any pictures of it. I'm hoping that the person I did this book for never reads this blog, because the book is a surprise for Christmas...

It's a tribute to someone very special in my life. A few years ago, I did a Tribute for each of my grandmothers, and the reaction was priceless. They just couldn't believe they were in a book! Here are some pictures of these beautiful books (they match because I also gave them to my parents and I wanted them to look nice together on the bookshelf...

I was lucky to have lots of wonderful pictures from their childhood days...

I even was able to scan things like their marriage certificates...

I added current family photos of kids, grandkids, and their families...

Even though many of the pictures I had were color, I chose to make all of them black and white - to make the book flow a little better...

A few pointers for "Tribute" books. Get other people to help you with the stories. Cherish Bound has a wonderful product for this - it is called Tribute Lifeprints. These are a collection of "story leaves" - 16 in all - that are all the same. You hand these out to 16 different people, and they use these "leaves" to write about the person. This is what the Tribute Lifeprints look like...

And here is the inside of one of the "story leaves" - It has 10 questions they can choose from, and a place to write their answers...

After you gather these back up from everyone, use them to write a tribute to the person. Gather pictures, and stories and when you've got everything ready, make your book. This is one of the best presents I've ever given! I wish I could tell you all about the one I just finished, but that will have to wait until after Christmas. By-the-way, once I made the book for my grandmothers, I was able to order copies for all of their kids! How easy is that?! Then, if any of my cousins ever want one of these beautiful books, they just have to go onto Cherish Bound's website and enter the number found on the back of the book - pay for it, and then they'll get it in the mail in about 2 weeks.

If you are interested in doing one of the books for your special someone, contact me at kara at cherishbound dot com, and I'll get you set up with your own publishing account (free). There is still plenty of time before Christmas.

Friday, October 2, 2009

CHRISTMAS GIFTS - 5X7 Book Idea #1... Books for your kids

Ok, readers... let's talk about Christmas gifts. Every fews days, I'm going to be giving you an idea for Christmas using Cherish Bound. Let's face it, you WILL be spending the money anyway, right? So, why not give something that will be treasured for generations to come?

CHRISTMAS IDEA #1: Stocking Stuffers

Our 5x7 sized books are the perfect stocking stuffers. The first idea for these small books is "Mom's Favorite Pictures". I did one of these small books for each of my children (for Valentine's Day actually). This is something that even older kids will love - my youngest at the time was almost 12 - oldest one was 18. (Actually my oldest was 20, and he was gone for two years, so I haven't done his yet).

First of all, you get to go through your pictures and pick out the ones that you love. This was the hardest part for me because I love taking pictures and I couldn't decide which pics were my favorite. But, once I got started, memories came flooding in and I knew which pics to pick! These books start with 24 pages, so if you do one picture per page - along with a little story, you'll need 24 pictures. I had a hard time keeping it to 24 - I think I ended up with around 36 for each book.

(*Remember that you can add pages to this book for 50 cents per page)

Next, if you're as old as me, you'll need to scan your pictures. Digital cameras weren't around when my kids were little. Remember to scan pictures no lower than 300 dpi. For those tiny pictures, do 600 dpi. And just a little reminder - wipe off your scanner every once in a while (I actually do this between scans), because the scanner will pick up even little dust particles (especially at 600 dpi) and they'll show up on your pictures as tiny white dots. Scanning really doesn't take that long. I scanned about 300 pictures a few days ago, and it only took me about 2 hours. I scanned several at a time, and then afterward, I cropped them apart in Photoshop.

After you've scanned the pictures, if they are the way you like them, you're ready to go. If you want to "fix" them, or turn them black and white, or whatever - do that in a program like photoshop. I save all of my pics to a folder on my desktop. Each book gets its own folder.

Now, as you are going through the pictures, make sure you jot down some stories about those pics. You know that saying... "A picture is worth a thousand words"? NOT TRUE. Really, in a 100 years, if there is not a name and a story to go with a picture, no one will care about them. You're photos will end up in a box, and then eventually thrown out. But, if someone can read about you - learn things from you, even when you are gone, that's priceless. SO, don't forget those stories. Kids are so cute and wonderful - there are bound to be some crazy, sweet stories about them that you can include in their books. You can either type the stories up in a word processing program and cut and paste into the books, or just type them straight into the books.

The next step, once you've gathered everything (I know this looks like alot of stuff, but really, the previous steps shouldn't take that long - maybe a day for each child), is to go into the Cherish Bound publishing online tool, and open a new project. Upload your pictures (easy to do quickly, because they have all been saved in one place - just pick all of your pics at once, and upload). It takes a little time for all of the pictures to upload, but you can start laying out your book during this time. I think these books automatically open with about 12 pages, so go ahead and add pages until you get to 24. The tool will let you know if you've reached the limit of free pages.

Go through and pick a template for each page. Then just start dragging and dropping pics onto pages. Add your text. After you are finished, make sure you read through everything and proof the book. Then, press the submit button. This whole process can be done easily in one day. It took me less than an hour to finish each book.

*Remember, these are just snapshots in time - you are not doing their entire childhood. Just a few of your favorite pics and stories. On my kids' books, I put a picture of them on the front, and then on the back, I put a pic of me with that child and a little "love" note. (You can add pics and words to the back cover of the small books, but not the large books.)

So, here are the books I made - I'll show you a few pages and the covers...

That book on the right probably needs an explanation. Those two pictures are a little different. In one, Alex is wearing a Batman cape and has his binky in his mouth. In the other, his binky is gone and he is grinning at the camera. Alex LOVED his binky - he went everywhere with it. I loved the idea of showing both pictures next to each other. It reminded me that I had to tell him to take his binky out of his mouth! What a cutie pie.


SAMPLE STORY... "This is one of my favorite pictures, Matthew. I found you one day, asleep on your favorite chair - your Blues Clues Thinking Chair! You and I watched Blues Clues every day. You loved that show. What a funny kid!"


On the back of each book were the words... To (kid's name) With Love, Mom

Cute, right? So, to recap... do a small 5x7 book for each child with your favorite pictures and stories. Shouldn't take more than 2 days for each one. You don't even have to leave the house. You'll receive your books in the mail about 3 weeks after you submit. Easy peasey!

Contact me to get a $29 publishing coupon. This will open up your customer account - which will stay open forever. And every penny of that $29 will go toward your first book. Cherish Bound is free to use - no software to purchase, or monthly fees. And, our hardbinding is guaranteed for LIFE!

Good luck and have fun with those memories.