Scrapbooks for Christmas

About this time of year I start thinking about Christmas presents. I love to get started early. I've been turning to 8x8 inch photo books more and more for family presents. And I usually take advantage of any coupon deals that I come across. I recently received a free book coupon for Shutterfly when I was shopping at Safeway, and I also took advantage of a Groupon for a $10 Shutterfly book.

Miller really enjoyed looking at some of the small books I made last year for people, so this year I've decided to have some printed especially for him. This Christmas he will receive two books for the years 2012 and 2013, containing a collection of layouts that I think he will really enjoy. I chose layouts that focused on holidays, his activities, our little family outings, and time spent with his cousins.

Here is the front cover, on which I placed a layout I had made that year. This was a simple layout with a couple of cute pictures. The original page had a date and the words "silly smiles"on it. I went into my layered file, took those words out and put "2012" on instead. It was a quick way to make a suitable cover and an opportunity to include another layout into the book.

A simple title for the spine.

Here are some of my favorite pages from the book.

 

For the back cover, I chose to place another layout from the year. This layout honors a very special game that was played all year long and which began Miller's obsession with mushrooms. It seemed a good choice as a kind of "summary" page for the back cover - and a way to get one more page in.

 

As I hinted at the beginning of this post, this book was an 8x8 inch hardcover book from Shutterfly. I assembled the book with their online tool, and I have to say that I am quite pleased with that online tool. It has pre-made page layouts for placing your images, but you can actually modify them if you choose.

For instance, I chose to place a single image on every page. They have a layout with a single square photo, but it has borders that are quite wide all the way around. So I went in and made the image spot a bit bigger. I basically enlarged the image right up to their "safe" guides. As I stretched the image box larger, blue lines magically appeared. I interpreted those lines as the safe guides for the trimming of the pages. Unfortunately I had to make the same modification to every single page, so that was a bit of a pain.

But I really liked that customization. In my most recent experience with the Blurb online tool called Bookify, I found myself frustrated at times by their pre-made layout choices, and no option for tweaking them. The more I use Shutterfly, the more I like it.

I'll share Miller's other Christmas book next week. Thanks for stopping by!