Photobooks (2020)

 I finished some photobooks recently

I did my pregnancy with Ella photobook. This wasn't as easy as I thought. I didn't have any of my original files so I had to pull form google photos. Sometimes the quality wasn't that good. I had to search for photos for the dates. I had collages but not things broken up by trimester and didn't have a collage of all the weeks. Just making a few collages sometimes took hours. I did have everything in blog posts but then I had way more blog posts about pregnancy than I could fit so I had to condense a lot. 

I did 6 years worth of mom group photos. I just had triple the amount I wanted to include. This one was super super super time consuming since I had to manually pull up pictures. Google photos stopped tagging people in 2015 so I couldn't use that to help me find events. This photobook I did a 12x12 version and 10x10. |Shutterfly will adjust the size easily but I had to then go and fix a ton of fonts. 

The first week of February I finished my pregnancy with Liam photobook.

All 3 photobooks were at the Shutterfly page max of 111 pages. Shutterfly doesn't let you embed the books in blogs anymore which is why I just linked to them and put in a screen shot. 

(I had already completed my pregnancy with Miles book a couple years ago.) 

Roadtrip 2017 Photobooks

I have blogged a lot of the days from our 2017 photo book but don't believe I posted about them all. I have completed the photo books for the trip. Here they are.

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I had to break it into 2 books because I hit the picture limit even though I didn't quite hit the page limits when I started putting a ton of pictures on a page.  I wanted to finish with the photo books before the 2018 road trip but I only got about 95% complete before the 2nd road trip.  I even ordered these 2 already.  I feel like there was more I could do but it already took forever. I'd have liked more summaries of towns (or just summaries in general of them) and also better maps.

Chatbooks

I started a new subscription that included facebook, instagram, and favorites on my phone.  I just got 20 books to start my order and be caught up.

I've gotten 18 books and 20 books before. Now I added 20 to that and only about a month behind. My 21st book will be closed soon.  I still get Groovebooks monthly and send them to my dad. Now books are $10. They used to be $8 a couple years ago when I started.  I also ordered 1 set when they had their 20% off 2 years ago. I've been waiting for my order to get 20% off and I got it with.  So I saved $40.  I have a code if you want to sign up then you can get $10 off.

The quality is good.   I like that you can keep the captions from facebook and instagram.  I tend to go through and edit longer descriptions so they are not printed on a second page.  Now with instagram changes I make collages less and would just post 5 pictures at a time. So as I go through I sometimes split up the caption to go with each picture so it wasn't all just with the first picture.   I figured I'd do this instead of photobooks but I still want to do some photo books. 

One thing is when I have instagram photos go to facebook then there are 2 of the picture in my series and I have to delete one. I just don't always post one photo to the other so I wanted to make sure I include them from both locations.

Here is an example of a time I kept a long caption and it shows up on the next page. I always make sure a spread like this is on the same page and I don't have to flip a page for the caption.

The other ones I got over a year ago.

How do you keep up with printing pictures? Do you keep up with photobooks? Do you scrapbook? Do you just put photos in an album?

Miles's First Month Photobook

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I worked super hard this weekend to finish a photobook I had started. I stayed up until 3 am twice and 1 AM another time. I did this all to save money. It was great motivation.

6 Month Photo Book

I actually did 3 variations of this book since I said I make them as gifts.  I have such a hard time trying to figure out how to write the journaling portion when I make them as gifts so mostly I just write how I would for a blog. Sometimes I don't and then it is all weird.

In case you are wondering I was going to make 1 book with months 4-6 but then I kept hitting the page limit. I would reduce and put more pictures on a page but was constantly maxing out then I maxed out on the number of pictures you can include on Shutterfly.  These were supposed to be Christmas gifts but I was very behind. By Christmas eve I only had 42 pages complete on the 4 month book.  On January 6, I finished the 4 month book. I would continue to add pictures before finalizing older dates so I when I was on page 7 of the 6 month book I still hadn't finished reorganizing the month 5 book. On January 20, I finished the month 5 book. On January 25 I finished the month 6 book.   I was more than a month late since shipping takes about 2 weeks!

I take far too many pictures. I didn't have them organized well so I went through and made a new folder for each date with the word favorites at the end of the title. Then I'd upload those to shutterfly one date at a time since some pictures don't have the date information and are put at the end.  Then I would go and rearrange and put about 10 per page instead of their 2 or 4 or whatever low number they suggest.  What made it even more difficult is that my desktop mouse doesn't seem to work right so I can't click and drag the pictures. So I create my favorites folders then upload on my desktop. Then I use my standing desk in the living room to reorganize. I reorganize while "watching" TV.  I would say that on average I spent 2 hours a day working on this from the first week of December until I finished.  There were a few days I stayed up until 2 AM just because I was on a roll and able to work without Ella bothering me!

There were days where I only took 300 pictures and I actually rather enjoyed those! 1200 picture days and a lot with my DSLR made it so hard to choose!  Dave thinks I put too many pictures in. He thinks I should have 1 book per year not 1 book per month!

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5 Month Photo Book

Sometimes I think I need a baby sitter just so I can make photo books.  Nowadays I make photo books instead of scrapbooking then I can make them for gifts.

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4 Month Photo Book

I'm really behind with photo books!

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