Our new samples albums have finally started trickling in, and I’m so excited to share them!  First up is a two-tone leather 8×8 flush mount album featuring Meredith & Mike’s beautiful wedding at St. Ambrose & the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.  I have been smitten with that silvery embossed leather since we got our album company’s swatches, so it was kind of a no brainer to choose this cover.  We paired it with a super soft blue suede and it looks even better in person. I LOVE petting this album.  I seriously took it out of the box every night for the first week we had it just so I could admire it.  It pained me to finally drop it off at the studio.

While I have posted before about some of our other albums, this actually the first flush mount I’ve put on the blog.  For those of you who don’t know the lingo, there are three major types of wedding albums:

• Traditional Matted Album: Photographic prints of various sizes are put in mats and then assembled into a book.  This is the book most of our mothers have from their weddings. They are beautiful and classic, and still available, though flush mount albums are the trend right now.
• Press Printed “Coffee Table” Style Book: This book is printed on a printing press, and the quality, while still quite good, is not quite as impressive as a true photographic print.  These books have thin pages, typical of a book you’d get at a bookstore.  Our “coffee table” books have a hinged binding which allows the page to lay flat.  I think this is so much better than the traditional binding because you can see all of the page.  We love these books for sign-in books or parent albums.
• Flush Mount: This style book is also known as a “digital album”, but that term annoys me, because a book is NOT digital!  A flush mount is made up of true photographic prints, but usually the pages are designed, so there may be multiple photos, white space, collages, etc.  The entire print is then bound to mat board, then the whole thing is trimmed and hand-assembled into a book.  Each page seamlessly runs to the edge, and the gutter (the center of the book) is very minimal or practically non-existant, when the print is folded.

Okay, I lied, there is one more type of book.

• Mounted Album: This style book is very similar to the flush mount, but instead of the print being mounted to the page prior to assembly, the book is put together and the prints are added afterwards.  Instead of the prints going flush to the edge of the page, there’s a small area around each print where the underlying mat board is visible.  This is still a fine quality book, but a little more economical than a flush mount.

Okay, so blah, blah, blah, where was I?  Oh yeah, so this book = 64 square inches of awesome.  Or actually, since it opens to a 16×8 image, maybe it’s actually 128 square inches of awesome.  This book feels heavy and lovely in your hands.  It’s substantial.  It’s got a bit of attitude.  The pages are thick and sturdy, and it opens flat so you can see every bit of every image.

This picture shows what I mean about the images going flush to the edge of the pages.  Also, the image on the bottom right does a great job of showing how smooth the two fabrics flow together.  In all honesty, I was a little worried about this combination, because this particular leather is really thick and the suede is a lot thinner.  But the join is smooth and beautiful.  I was really impressed.

Here’s one more to show you what I mean:

See how the pages open up flat?  That is a good thing!  :)

Finally, here is a comparison of a round spine versus a flat spine.  Our album company offers both styles, though for some speciality cover options, they can only do the flat spine.  I think the round spine looks great with the leather covers though, it makes the book look even more substantial and unique.  The cover is lightly padded as well, which gives it a luxurious feel.

We really took our time and did our homework before we settled on an album company to work with.  And I have to say, we are really happy with the choice we made.  All of our albums are made-to-order here in the USA, and are assembled by hand.  Each one is a unique creation – there’s no warehouse with a bunch of pre-assembled books lying around.  There is a staggering number of cover materials and color options so you can choose something that’s truly unique and fits your style.  They also offer metal and acrylic covers, as well as canvas, and glass, and well, the list goes on!  (We have a 12×12 with a metal cover due to arrive this week, and I’m sure it will be up on the blog soon.)

The one other thing that makes each album unique is that every album is custom designed.  We design every album from scratch, without using templates.  It’s just one more way we make your album uniquely yours.  Below is a sampling of some of the spreads in this 8 x 8 book.

In case you can’t tell, I’m SUPER HAPPY about this book.  I have always been a bookworm, and bookbinding fascinates me.  Seeing our work so beautifully bound and in such an attractive package just makes me ridiculously happy.  It’s very gratifying to us personally, so I can only imagine how exciting it is for our clients.  We will be sharing both more sample albums and actual client albums this year on the blog, and I can’t wait.  :)

Related posts:

1. Product Spotlight: Amanda’s Guestbook
2. More Mini Albums
3. Introducing our 4×6 mini-album.