I opted for an 11" x 8" landscape photo book with a hard, custom cover. The process was very simple, first picking the images, then choosing the book you want followed by the theme. There are lots of different themes providing coordinating backgrounds for your photos. Some premium themes have an extra charge attached.
I love the themes as they really make your book into something special. I chose a premium theme, Hallmark Magical Memories. This costs £5 extra and gives you twenty pages, each with a different but coordinating background. I then personalised my book by dragging and dropping images into the spaces. I also added my own embellishments which I chose from a huge array of images and phrases to add to my project. I was impressed with how easy it made it to create something a bit out of the ordinary. The phrases such as "Splash", "Fun in the Sun", "At the Park" etc. worked well with pictures from our days out. "Birthday Boy", "Time to Celebrate" and "Party Time" were perfect embellishments for Freddy's birthday snaps.
The layouts could be changed to include extra images, which is always important to me on account of my massive number of digital images that I want to see liberated from my hard drive. Individual photos and text boxes can be dragged and dropped manually to further personalise the finished product.
I had a lot of fun making this book, and I had no idea that I had been creating for almost 2 hours before I was ready to order. Making photo books can be quite time consuming when you get lost in the creative process! For those who don't have hours to spend, there is an autofill option which takes a fraction of the time. But for me, I love getting creative and making a completely bespoke end product.
There are other optional extras you can add on. I went for a paper upgrade giving thick, glossy, photo quality paper for my book.
My book arrived well packaged within the week. Great service!
The theme and embellishments added a real element of fun to the book. The kids loved the big, colourful pages, fun phrases and interesting photo layouts. It told the story of our summer from Freddy's birthday in July to his first day at school perfectly! We will treasure it for years to come.
Prices for the 11" x 8" hard custom cover photo books start at £24.99.
My top tip for making photo books is to create a new folder of the photos you want to include in your book on your computer, making sure the images are not too big. This way, the upload will be quicker and easier to mange. You will be able to double check which images you want before you begin making the book and upload them as a job lot ready to be used. If you are like me and take ten shots of every picture, it can be tricky trying to find the best image whilst in the middle of making your book. Taking the time to prepare which pics you want before you start makes the process much less stressful.
Find out more and make your own at Snapfish.