Hi Moms,
For quite a while, I have been wanting to create a photo-type memory book for my two kiddos. I would like to transfer info from their baby books into one for each of them along with photos, etc. I have not had any luck finding a site (like Shutterfly) that has the type of photobook where you can also have a lot of text. The text is usually very limited... Have any of you done something like this, and if so, what website did you use? Thanks for your help and Happy New Year!
snapfish.com has photo books. I make one every year for my kids bday with a year of memories. You can select what type of page you want for each page- for example: one photo with text, 2 photos with text, up to 9 photos I believe and you can choose text only on pages. Hope this helps!
I have used Kodak www.kodakgallery.com
and Costco.
BOTH came out GREAT.
BOTH has sales/deals.
BOTH also allows you to input text. Of course not a lengthy story for each photo, but captions that are more than enough, and you can input the dates as well.
As an aside, when I want more 'text' to accompany my photos, I, once I receive my photobooks, I hand write in more text if I want. That way, it is also more personal and my kids like seeing their Mommy's actual hand-writing in the books... because then they feel like I 'made" it... and it is more special.....
all the best,
Susan
Walmart has a bunch of different photobook options, including several where you can have a lot of text. Check it out on their website.
I love Shutterfly... their photobooks are beautiful. You can do entire pages of text if you want. In the layouts, you have options for number of pictures or it says "text". So you could type whatever you want on one page, then put your photos on the page next to your "story" if you want. Or you can put one photo on a page and still have a decnt amount of space for text on that same page. Check out the different layouts for their photobooks and you may be pleasantly surprised.
I use Walmart.com, and I love it. I do a bookfor my kids each year (a constant project) but I love looking back on them.
Example -
Jill's 1st year
Jill's 2nd year
I was never very good with scrapbooking, so this was a great alternative for me. In my kids books I have little things likes "Baby's 1st..." with a list of firsts (steps, smiles, etc), as well as a story of their birth, mommy and daddy's first reactions, special events from the year. I also have pages in each book for each of big holidays and pictures of family members (with or without the kid). Just things I think they or I will want to look back on. The very last page my husband and I always write a handwritten note for the kids. I love the books so much!
There lots of other sites, but shutterfly provides the best quality of the pics which will last for a long time. They have 50% off right now.
Math stewart has one if you are up for some crafts.
With Shutterfly you can load a whole "picture" to a page. With that you could scan or digitally create your own .jpg with more text. I use a few digital scrapbooking software programs and then load the full pages to
Shutterfly or snapfish for printing. The programs I use are Photoshop Elements and Creative Memories Storybook. There may be less expensive versions of software if this isn't something you will do all the time.
Creative Memories Storybook Creator software is wonderful. You can also create party invitations, family calendars, etc. with the software!
You can take a look for yourself at www.mycmsite.com/marycluley
Also, go to:
http://projectcenter.creativememories.com/photos/digital_...
for beautiful layout ideas.
If I may, I would like to make a suggestion. Like you, I LOVE to journal! I love to write the "story" that goes with the photos. I believe this will be a great treasure to our children when we are gone. When I started my children's albums, I would write, "Easter, 1999." Now, I write, "Gary, you look so handsome in your Easter outfit, 1999." So I use my children's NAMES every opportunity I get. I find it very endearing.
If I can help you in any way, I would be honored to.
Shutterfly.com- easy- free
Shutterfly is wonderful! I recently discovered Mixbook too (www.mixbook.com). You can go into much greater detail with Mixbook. Quality is great for both books.
Kodakgallery.com also has photobooks. I don't know how much content you're trying to add or what their limit is but I recently did photobooks for my kids and they loved them.
If you're content with having one photo on the page Shutterfly allows a large text block. Otherwise you get very small spaces. The worst thing about text in Shutterfly is the ridiculous way they want you to edit it when you can't stay in the preview screen! It's very time consuming and it must be able to program it so the edit screen is the preview. I did a book about a 1400 mile bike trip my son took using his blog posts and photos. It was a challenge to get the text near the relevant pix and not go over 40 pages. Also on Shutterfly I don't think you get to preview what the different fonts really look like on a page before you choose them. You should be able to do that before you're making a choice you can't change once you've started the book.
