Thursday 26 January 2012

My Shutterfly Photobook

One of the most addictive projects I've ever done is making our Chicago photo book. While I'd love to have the skills to make a scrapbook an online version was much more workable for me. Yet I wasn't sure which company to try, but after a play around I decided to use Shutterfly. Shutterfly aim to provide the user with a range of templates, cover styles, embellishments and designs to create a personalised book for you and your memories. It was these extra touches of embellishments - for example being able to add pins, stickers, tape, banners and love hearts, that set Shutterfly aside from the other photo book websites which merely provide a printed photo album with the added line of text. 

Online design board - your uploaded photos and pages line the bottom with design options for layouts, backgrounds, embellishments and a library of idea pages are on the left. You can edit, arrange and preview your photo book pages at anytime.

How long you spend and how detailed you make your photo book is entirely up to you, you have the ability to save and store your photos online and return to your project as and when you need. Because it's up to you how creative you want to be, you don't have to be an entire genius at either computers or graphic design, the templates really do help you on your way. From designing to ordering my book took me three weeks - Christmas and New Year happened mid way and I was determined to do a good job on our honeymoon photographs, verging on somewhat obsessive.

I opted to make a 8 x 11" photo book with a hard cover, you're provided with twenty pages with any extra charged at 75 cents each of which I added ten extra pages. Shutterfly seem to run a lot of promotions so we got our book at a discount with addition savings on the extra pages, another offer provided at the time, free shipping on orders over $30 so we saved again. In all, our book cost just under $34/£22.

It took just over a week for our photo book to arrive and they provide you the ability to track your package. All their parcels are bright orange and are safety wrapped. Inside of which was my first ever photo book. I love how shinny the front cover is, for which you can add your own photos and words - I opted to cover ours with a photograph of the bean. The quality of the paper and the printing is of a very high standard, when you upload your photographs a warning appears if they are of a high enough resolution. Even the one photograph which was of a low resolution came out as good as the rest.




The printed page of the computer screen [first photograph], the spine, and the spine and back of the cover the later of which you can design and embellish as much or as little as you require.

Would I make a photo book again and use Shutterfly? The answer to both is yes. I love the personalization you can create and their offering of inspiration. To be able to have my photographs properly printed out is an extra bonus especially to the quality to which they are printed. Whether I would create a photo book for normal everyday occasions is a different matter, but for important events such as our honeymoon, children, big holidays, etc I could really imagine making one. Shutterfly also allow you to order your photographs as prints and make other photo gifts so it's a very useable website with something for everyone.

Have you ever tried making a photobook? 

19 comments:

  1. This is so amazing! The quality is so good, will be great for capturing memories x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah it really is, keeps them all together and just having the quality that they were printed at makes them really special.

      Delete
  2. So adorable, and amazing quality

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh wow! This is beautiful! I used one of these sights for part of my photography course at uni I used blurb which was really good too. I want to make one of these of my last holiday now! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I think i'll definitely be making more!

      Delete
  4. Awesome! I want to make one with the pictures from my last holiday now! I'm determined to print off photographs this year its a crime to just keep them on the computer for fb and blogs! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's my mission for the year - to print off more photographs, ordered another 70 photographs to be printed today [actually from Shutterfly] and loads of them were taken like a year or two ago. Finally need to push myself into getting them into albums as well as having them digitally.

      Delete
  5. I have never done this but it seems like such a great idea! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is well worth a go if you want something different for your photographs.

      Delete
  6. It looks amazing. It's a much cheaper alternative and a cuter version of a photo album! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I mean you can as much or as little added words etc as you want, I guess it's the virtual girls version of a scrapbook!

      Delete
  7. LOVE it! I want to do something like this for some of the trips we've taken over the years :)

    x Jasmine

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would be really good! I was thinking of doing something similar with all the arty pictures i've taken but then I would need to take better care of storing rather then deleting them!

      Delete
  8. Its something I've always wanted to try - might just give it a go after this. It looks really good.
    Liz @ Shortbread & Ginger

    ReplyDelete
  9. OMGGGOSH LOVE THIS!! i just made a shutterfly book for the hubby's parents for christmas.. so they could see our pictures of us in germany :)!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. these are such a good idea. I love making them. I recently made one for my boyfriend full of pictures of our trip in LA and Vegas I think they're the modern digital age equivalent of traditional photo albums!

    dp
    x
    www.inanityandthegirl.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. This looks amazing! I love making photo books, may have to start making another one! xx

    ReplyDelete