Creating Printable Baby Record Books With Words and Photos
So I want to create a baby record book for DD2 and ahem, DD1. I've had a quick look on snapfish and on iPhoto and their photo books don't seem to have scope for words to accompany the photos. I want to use quite a few words with little anecdotes. I also want to be able to get it printed as a proper book for them.
Have I just not looked thoroughly enough? What else do people recommend?
you can create pages in just about any program in the page sizes you want, and then import them to snapfish/momento/bigw etc depending on the size and style of book you want
i use creative memories software (you can trial version 4.0 for a month for free, then buy if you like) - save each page as a photo file and then import as full page image to snapfish to print (i like their leather bound books and print when they have buy one get one free or similar).
will pm you a link to one of DD's photo books that i've created so you can see if that's the sort of thing you like.
i was gifted the CM software when DD was born, and have been getting braver each project as i learn the program. it is more exxy than some others (my memory suite is one i can think of) - but you have the freedom of importing pretty much any jpg file to use as "paper" (for background/frames etc) and any png file for decorative elements. i have played with gimp and photoshop, as you can do layouts in these as well - i'm just not as comfortable with the way they work. others would swear by them
is this the sort of thing you're looking to do?
this has been done in creative memories software - i created 12inch square pages, did the layouts at home, saved each page as an image of it's own, imported to snapfish and used as a full page image in the book there. they print up fantastically. and if you subscribe to snapfish, you can keep an eye on specials. late november the last two years they've had a buy one get one free deal, and a few times a year they have 40% off. given you have to pay to have any more than 20 pages, it is definitely worth waiting for those deals so the extra pages don't cost so much!
Yep you can do then on snapfish, you just need to pick an alternate layout from the dropdown box. There are quite a few with text boxes.
blurb is a company that I used recently to make a book of DD1's artwork. It's a US company but better price for a comparably better product.
you can often pick up free photo books (8inch square or 7*5inch) from artscow as well - you just pay postage and if you want more than 20 pages.
definitely check your prices before you decide what you want to do - i found artscow were cheap as you only paid postage if you printed 20 pages - so hardcover book for a price similar to a discounted softcover from bigw - but when i started needing more pages (Emerald's second year book was about 80 pages from memory) it worked out much more expensive than getting something locally when there was a sale on. i opted for leather bound books so will stick with snapfish - i guess i wanted something that looked more like a classic photo album. i only ever print when i can get a huge discount though. 20 page leather bound book (12inch) sounds expensive, but when you get it half price, it's really not that bad! i think E's last book ended up, with all the extra pages added, still costing less than $70 for an 80 page book...
Creating Printable Baby Record Books With Words and Photos
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