What we love most here at Mixbook is seeing just how creative all you Mixbookers can get! This latest photo book idea has definitely got us smiling. Mixbooker Lauren has brought together fantasy and photography to create this stunning photo book. With a little help from her daughters, and a lot of fabric, pillows and imagination, Lauren was able to create this beautiful story book. This photography method allowed her daughters to defy gravity and race around the world, using any means of transportation they so desired. Read on to see her inspiration and how she went about completing this project!
Mixbook: What inspired you to create the Great Race Around the World? Lauren: My children were my inspiration to create "The Great Race Around the World." I tell them little stories at bedtime every night that puts them into the story. In these stories, they always do amazing things like travel to space, use fairy magic to make rainbows, and even race around the world. I saw online that people were taking cool pictures by laying down instead of standing, so that they could interact with objects in an impossible way. So I set out to create an imaginary world for the girls and snap pictures of them. It was Piper's idea to make one of her stories with these pictures.
MB: We noticed the first part of the title includes "The Adventures of Rory and Piper." Does this mean this is the first book of a series? :) L: This is definitely a first book in the series. I figured this would be a good way to document their childhood with something other than posed pictures. We already have 2 more written that we need to take pictures for.
MB: How did you start writing the actual story? Any input from the girls? L: We based the book off of our bedtime story about them racing. Piper sat down with me and we just pulled out loads of fabric and came up with different methods of travel for them to pose for. Then I just wrote a story to connect all of the ways they could travel. I had these little tassel things in there from a graduation cord. And Piper would say, "Ooh, these would look good on that brown thing, for a magic carpet." So I wrote in a desert scene. It was really fun.
MB: What was the photo shoot process like? Was it difficult styling all the scenes or getting Rory to pose? L: Rory was actually the easiest part of the whole scene. It took a while to go through all of our fabric bins to find the right pieces, but family members were always helpful in donating scraps for us to use. I would set up the scene piece by piece, then make sure to let in enough natural light to light it up really nice. Then I would have to pose Piper first. She is a very rambunctious little girl, so getting her to hold still for too long was difficult. So I would have to be quick at that point. Then I would just lay Rory in place, stand up on a chair so I could get the whole scene in, and get Rory to look where I wanted by dangling one of the tassel things down for her to grab at. And voila!
MB: How long did it take for you to finish the photo shoot and the Mixbook? L: Sometimes we would do a few pictures a day. Sometimes, we would go a week or two in between. I would say the photos were taken over a 3 month period. It could have been finished sooner, but it was just something we did in our spare time. The Mixbook didn't take long at all to make. I cropped all of the pictures in Photoshop before hand. So I really had an easy time with the set up on Mixbook. Then it was a lot of typing. But it was really easy to put together. I think I spent a couple hours on a Saturday and put the whole thing together.
MB: Any tips for users who want to attempt this project? L: The best tips I can give would be to always have fun with it. Let the kids help, they always have better ideas, lol. Build from the background up. And be ready with distractions because let's face it, no child can hold still for very long.
MB: Anything else you'd like to add? L: This could be used for any project also. We did our annual Christmas card with these type of photos. We live in Florida, so there isn't very much for Christmas scenery outside in the winter. So we made it ourselves and all posed in them. We did a snowball fight using balled up socks. All kinds of things. You could use it for any type of book or photo album. I have a current project on Mixbook that is a family cookbook. I have an at home bakery and the girls love to help, so I made a recipe book for them and put in little pictures of them in an imaginary bakery, baking huge cakes, and things like that.
We absolutely loved this idea and hope you enjoyed reading about how Lauren created this project. Remember, these photos will be taking up an entire page (sometimes even two!), so make sure your photos are at least 4MB in size at 300 DPI. To quickly fill the entire page with the photo, use our photo background fill button. Let us know if you have any questions and good luck on creating your stories! We can't wait to see all the creative photos! :)
