Creating Books with Family Photos

So my favorite gift I made this Christmas was a photobook for my sister and her family. I took fun photos that I had taken through the years of each of her children, and made a book for them. It was so fun to have the kids open the book and see their own pages. My nephew opened the book and said “Hey, Mom — it’s our pond!” I had taken a photo of the pond in front of their house with the frog prince in the middle and made it the cover of the book.

The book was a huge hit and I loved making it. Now my sister is going to change her scrapbooking and instead of making a bunch of scrapbooks, she is going to gather all of the photos through the years and make a book for each child. They are the perfect size, and the printing quality is incredible – so it makes the scrapbooks feel like an heirloom. The other benefit is that you can easily make additional copies for grandparents or for when your kids get married and move away.

Using Smilebooks.com I downloaded the software, used their easy templates and made a beautiful professional book. It was very easy. The hardest part was choosing which photos I wanted to use.

It took a little bit of time to understand how the templates worked and how to drag and drop the images for a full background, and I wished I could have used the software on my MAC (they’ve announced that a MAC version will be available very soon). I was a little concerned that the shipping would take long since it prints in Germany – but I actually got the book in less than 10 days and was very pleased.

I really loved the process and especially how much the book was enjoyed. I just checked out the Smilebooks site and it looks like you can get $10 off right now (expires 1/25/09). I highly recommend checking it out. If you’re looking for a great gift, or even a way to really enjoy your collection of digital photos (rather than taking all of the time to scrapbook — which you can do later when you have more time) — these photo books are beautiful and can be enjoyed by everyone. I can imagine it would be a wonderful gift for a wedding, or a baby’s first birthday, or even a way to document your vacations.

Just a recommendation I thought you might want to check out.