Bookmaking tip anyone?

In case you didn't know. All of these collage pages end up getting bound in a hardbound book for my family at the end of each year. In case you are thinking about doing something like this, let me share with you a little tidbit that I figured out along the way.

See these here two pages above here?  I wanted the block of photos to act like one big design element.  So I blocked them all together.  The problem with that is that when they are bound up you loose about 1/4 inch on each page in the center into the ditch (where the pages are sewn or glued together).  What I do to remedy that is leave some extra on the sides and when I crop them down to 8x10's from the one large page I use when designing (16x10 inches), I exclude the open edges and grab a little of the other side's image.  Can you see the extra in the middle?  That way when they are printed the should match up pretty close.  Clear as mud?

Another way around the ditch is to just put things there that don't matter if they can't be seen after binding.  Here I chose a couple of pictures (the bear and the view from the people mover) where I could loose the middle of the image without loosing anything important.  Then I used the accent color to fill in the other area, just in case it does show up after binding.  

I learned this the hard way so hopefully if you are doing/considering doing books like this, you can save yourself some pain!

p.s.  I use blurb to print my books and really like them.

p.p.s  My daughter's dance studio has wifi now.  Just think of all the things I can do while waiting for an hour for Maren to finish her class.  Kiera on my iphone and me on the laptop.  Quality time.