Years ago, when I was a freshman in high school my mom brought out her old scrapbook from her high school years. It was a big 12 x 12 book, with off colored pages (due to age), filled with photos, newspaper clippings, cards, notes... It was so fun to look at. I decided I wanted to make a scrapbook with my photos, report cards, awards... from my childhood. My mom took me to the craft store, where I purchased the book with extra pages and self adhesive stickies. This was a time before scrap booking was a popular craft. There were not multiple aisles of card stock, paper and stickers to choose from. But I didn't mind, because all I had plenty of photos/ clippings to fill up the pages of my scrapbook. I made 2 in early high school. One issue I ran into was that I tried to add so many pages to my book, that I didn't have enough extenders to reassemble the book. I should have just made multiple books.
Fast forward to the early-mid 2000's, after I graduated from college. My roommate at the time was making a scrapbook, and re-introduced me to all the cool products they had for scrap booking. Since my first round of scrapbook making in the late 1990's, I had since finished high school and college. I had always loved taking photos of my friends each year of school- so needless to say I had shoeboxes of photos. Some I had put into photo albums, but when you take as many photos as I did (this was a time before digital cameras; when you had to use real film and get the whole role developed and printed), it did not take long to run out of albums. Having paid for the pictures, it was hard to throw them away.
And a new hobby was born in my life. During that first year after college, I managed to get completely caught up with scrap booking my photos from the past high school and college years. In the end I had a bunch of 3 inch fat, 12 x 12in scrapbooks! The first one, included my junior/ senior year of high school. The next book, included all 4 years of college. And I started one that would be the next 4 years out of college. I had 3 big, fat, bulky- but cool scrapbooks! I liked that each page was so big, and I could cut/ collage so many photos onto one page- that felt efficient (more than a photo album). And so I continued this tradition of hand scrap booking... until I got married. Then I switched over to Digital Photo book scrap booking! I will never go back.
As efficient as scrapbooks are, there is no doubt that they are extremely bulky. And if this is your main method of documenting life, then you may just find yourself drowning in scrapbooks.
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| lady genevieve's 1st year baby book |
I just finished up a photo book for lady genevieve's first year and one documenting our recent family trip to Disney World. They arrived in the mail today, and were wonderful to have in hand to look at. Though they can be a little on the expensive side, they come out so professional. One of my top reasons I now make digital photo books, is that they take up far less space than the traditional scrapbooks. This is worth it to me- so I will continue to wait for sales and order up my photo books as they are completed.
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| Our Mixbook collection |
My favorite photo book making site is called MIXBOOK. I resisted changing over to digital scrapbook making until I discovered Mixbook. Other sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly were nice, but at the time very limited in what you could personalize in your photo book. They had set layouts and backgrounds, and I wasn't quite satisfied with the limitations. I wanted to be able to change photo sizes and layouts. Put text where I wanted to put it. Change the text font. And so forth. Now a days, I think both Snapfish and Shutterfly are likely on par with Mixbook in terms of personalizing and what you can adjust with the photo books, but I haven't looked into it.
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| Trip to Peru |
They make amazing gifts too- our Disney photo book is a holiday gift for the rest of our family who went on the same trip. So if you haven't ever made a photo book, you may want to look into it! Get all your favorite digital photos into one place, and have an album that you can hold while you remember good times from the past!
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| West Coast Road Trip- Yosemite National Park |
You can make your photobook about anything- travel & vacations, family, baby, year at glance, school... We tend to make them for our big adventures. I currently have some in progress: Florida Trip (Disney & Everglades National Park) & Redwoodshire Renovation. Whenever we go on trips, we take tons of photos of small details, like signs or close up of flowers, and sometimes we do landscapes- these photos add interest to each page, rather than having a spread of photos with people in each one.
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| Costa Rica Babymoon |
Good luck capturing & preserving your memories! Though these books can take some time, and cost a bit more than a regular photo album. You will not be disappointed! We LOVE our photo books.
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