I've had a lot of time on my hands with a baby sleeping in my lap lately. And less brainpower than it takes to draw (until recently, as you might have noticed. We are starting to get some sleep! Yay!). Thus, I have been working on photobooks. Because I decided not to journal and have been reusing templates from previous projects, these books are taking less than a week of naps each. I finished 2011, 2009 and two vacation books. Can't afford to get them all printed at once, however.
I started with our 2011 book. I designed it with the Creative Memories software (which I am still full of love for) and printed it through Picaboo (because they are cheaper).
Here is the front cover (very inspired by Paislee Press, she is so talented!)
Spine. Cover looks decent, maybe a bit overshiney. Doesn't feel quite as sturdy as my CM book.
First page with some notes on what we were up to that year. That's pretty much all the journalling I did. The rest of the album is just places and dates.
The print quality is fine. The colour is quite good but the photos are a bit noisy. Honestly I haven't found a printer that has the quality I would like (as good as photos) but CM is a bit better.
I was a bit annoyed with Picaboo's crop lines in the program. They are very vague and don't have any difference between the gutter and the outside edge. Obviously it eats more on the gutter side, so I'll adjust that next time I use them.
Back cover
Little S looooves having a book full of photos of us. Picaboo was having a 2 for 1 deal (they often seem to have really good sales) so I got a book for her as well. It's still shrinkwrapped and tucked away for when she leaves home. I'd like to get doubles for the girls as I go so that they have albums ready for them.
She loved it so much that she decided to read it aloud to the kokeshi doll I picked up at a garage sale this morning.
That she convinced her father to put a diaper on (everything wears diapers these days. Also Little A's shoes and dresses keep showing up on stuffies.)
She loooves it. I had intended to put in on a shelf somewhere...at least it only cost $2?
Little A had no opinion on the book. Probably because she wasn't in it.
Fingers!
Sorry, I got distracted there.
Moral of this story: Creative Memories makes a better quality book. Picaboo makes a half decent book for cheaper. I'll be doing important albums through Creative Memories (Little A's baby book) but can't afford them all the time as they almost never have sales. I'm still planning on trying out Shutterfly on one of my remaining books, so I'll let you know what I think. I'm not planning on using Blurb, I'm not wild about the print quality of books I've seen, and I'm doing 8x8 books and they don't make that size.
