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| I have gotten a little taste of doing digital photo book and digital scrap booking. I have used Stampin Up's My Digital Studio program. With it, I made my first digital photo book. I wanted to do a photo book for Ash of his growing up years and give it to him when he married his new wife Annie, in May of this year. It required scanning a lot of pictures, because the majority of the pictures I wanted to use were before the digital era. I planned to print one using Stampin Up's printing service and one using Shutterfly so that I could have a copy too and to compare the two print services, but .....I found out that Stampin Up is the only place that prints a vertical 8 x 11 style photo book which is how I had designed it in with MDS software. Stampin Up's service was very fast and I was happy with the quality, however, I thought the price was fairly steep. A couple months later, however, they reduced their prices and I went ahead and ordered the second copy from them. This summer when we had a Benjamin Family reunion and had a lot of pictures to share from that time, I uploaded pictures to Shutterfly. I then made a "share sight" so other family members could upload their pictures as well and anyone could view and order pictures from them. I think this worked really well and it was so nice to share in every one's pictures and viewpoint of the family reunion. I went a step further and created and book using favorite pictures from that time, including pictures of all the families and fun snapshots. I made it in the 8 x 8 size. I ordered one for myself and one for Grandpa and Uncle Dale, and others ordered it as well. Because of my activity, Shutterfly offered me a free 8 x 8 book, and so I created another book to commemorate Ash and Annie's wedding. I love all of these books. The quality is great and the books so compact and a wonderful way to save pictures. I have printed very few pictures in the last two years or so. I want to make a photo book for each year. I am a little behind, but winter is coming and it will be a great project for days when it is too cold to go out. I also want to scan the photo scrap book that I made of Bradley's growing up years and print it in a book. Then, I really should do one of Joellyn's growing up years, right? The projects could be unending. Joellyn wants to do a photo book of old Benjamin photo's that used to belong to Grandpa and Grandma Benjamin. That project seems especially daunting, but if that is not done, what will the value of all the old pictures be to anyone in a few years? |
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| This has gotten a little wordy, but I just wanted to share my enjoyment and appreciation for the online photo book opportunities that are out there. I'd also like to hear from some of my readers about your experience with photo books. What sight do you like to use? Do you create and then upload your creations or do you use the fun and easy layouts available on your printing sight? Or do you prefer the age old way of printing pictures and cutting and pasting and decorating your scrapbooks. I truly do admire some of your works of art (those of you who do it this way), but it just wasn't for me. I just couldn't get it done. I just got an idea and inspiration booklet from Shutterfly for doing Christmas and New Years cards. There are some awesome and creative ideas available. It has gotten me thinking about how I will do my Christmas cards this year. I just had an enjoyable journey through the past year, going through my old blog posts, thinking about the past year and what I might share in my card and letter. How about you....how are you going to make your cards this year and if so, how will you go about it? I can't wait to see your creations! Linda |
