Blurb Giveaway: Turn digital pictures into a family photo album for holiday gifts
We wrote about the book making possibilities from Blurb last year, but I had never tried it myself. Well, I just made my first digital photo book through Blurb.com and it came out great. I love giving photo albums, calendars and other custom and personalized gifts at Christmas and a Blurb book is perfect. In the past I have printed them out on high quality color printers and either had them bound at Kinkos or bound them myself, but having a professionally bound book is much easier and looks pretty slick.
Here's what I liked and thought could have been improved, plus what I learned along the way. At the end of the post find out details for our giveaway. Five winners will get to make their own blurb books, plus we've got blurb discount codes anyone can use right away.
Imagewrap covers: let's you put a full bleed image on the front and back covers with no dust cover to get lost or torn. See mine above. I decided not to put any words on the cover, but you can.
Work on your desktop: When you make your Blurb book, you will download their free software and work right on your own computer rather than online. This is much better because it's faster and you don't have to upload all your photos, in fact, it can open your iPhoto or Flickr folders right in the program.
Flexible layouts: I'm very picky about design and had a lot of ideas about how I wanted my pages laid out. To be honest, it took me a while of playing around with the layouts provided in their program to figure out how to get what I wanted. The trick was when I realized you can use part of a layout and the other boxes just won't appear. That's when I realized how flexible their layouts really were and I was pretty happy with their options.
Cool themes: I'm not a big theme person. When I started my book, I was pretty sure I would stick to a modern look with simple white lines, but once I started playing around with their themes, I realized there were some nice little accents that could be added and I have to give them credit for having some cooler themes than the kitschy stuff you expect. The dandelion illustration I used on this page breaks up the age after page of photos and the nice little border you can see on the very first image in this post ties the photo to the page more.
Even small images looked good: I didn't have a single image that the Blurb layout program, which warns you when an image is too small, thought was big enough for a full bleed, but I found that even images that were too small came out looking pretty good and the thumbnail layout is great for using lots of little images that you take from your cellphone or something.
Things that could be improved:
I wish there were more layouts for 6 and more images on a page with varying image sizes. They have some collage layouts where the images overlap which I don't like. I want something similar to their other nice clean layouts but with multiple image sizes. Like the above layout which I actually imported as a PDF from a book I had already laid out in Apple's book program.
Overall my images came out looking great, except for the ones that are a little dark. That tends to be pretty common that images come out dark. Your computer screen is backlit so images seem brighter. I wish there was some way to know if an image was going to look dark when printed (my printer didn't make them look dark).
Another thing to watch out for is that you will lose a bit of picture into the crack of the book, so be aware of that when you are laying out full bleed images.
For more blurb tips and ideas check out our previous post.
Enter our giveaway:
Five winners will win a blurb.com credit for $29.95 which is enough to get yourself a book like the one I had made. To enter just leave a comment on this post telling us your favorite holiday activity. Five winners will be selected at random, so email this link to all your friends.
Comments must be left by 5pm on Friday, November 14th. Winners will be announced the next day. Please leave a first name and initial in your comment so we can post the winner by name.
If you can't wait to start your book, use the blurb discount code mommypoppins10 at checkout to get 10% off your blurb book. The code expires November 25th.
For all you giveaway lovers, we have lots more giveaways coming up this month so keep checking back.
I love making frosted
I love making frosted preetzels with my daughter.
I love making warm spiced
I love making warm spiced apple cider.
We like to get out of town
We like to get out of town and visit friends in New Jersey -- good friends warm the heart, too.
Family Fondue!!!!!
Family Fondue!!!!!
we love to make fudge!
we love to make fudge!
Spending time with family,
Spending time with family, especially my daughter's grandparents and great grandparents.
We love making cookies
We love making cookies together.
Weeks before the holidays,
Weeks before the holidays, we set aside time during the weekends to gather odds and ends of material: paper, stickers, glitter, craft foam, paint, etc. that we use and cut up to make our home made holiday cards to send out to family and friends.
My favorite day is the day
My favorite day is the day we bring the tree home. My husband likes to do it the night before, but my son and I start thinking about it the day after Thanksgiving. Every year, we all compromise. I love the photos of the two guys lugging the tree though the snow, warmly dressed --wearing silly hats.
This is the best idea
This is the best idea ever!
Favorite holiday activity? Making decorations and ornaments around the house...before the cats decide to eat them!!
I love taking my son to the
I love taking my son to the holiday train show at Grand Central Station. It opens at 8 am which is great for little kids who wake early and need somewhere to go in the cold weather! Plus it's free so we can go as many times as we like.
My son loves trains so we do
My son loves trains so we do the train at the Citicorp Center, the one at the Transit Museum Annex at Grand Central, and this year we're adding the holiday train show at the Botanic Gardens.
I love helping my children
I love helping my children pick out gifts for children in need and how giving can be as special as getting a gift.
I love taking my son to see
I love taking my son to see the Chrimstmas tree at Rockefeller Center. We also love going to see the Holiday Lights at the Bronx Zoo at night. Being there at night and seeing the lights and some of the animals is a whole different experience than visiting in the daytime.
Visiting Santa at Macy's in
Visiting Santa at Macy's in NYC>
My favorite holiday activity
My favorite holiday activity is eating! Every year my family has a special surf and turf dinner at my parents house and I look forward to it all year...simply the best! This would be a very fun gift for the holidays. Thanks for the giveaway!
What a great gift idea this
What a great gift idea this is. Our favorite holiday activity is seeing the train exhibits. My son loves them!!!
My favorite holiday activity
My favorite holiday activity in the past few years is making crafts with my grandchildren! We get together sometime around Thanksgiving and gather a number of different craft projects. Then we make gifts for everyone in the family and for their teachers/etc. As they've gotten older the crafts have become more complicated. This year, we're making pottery!
My favorite holiday activity
My favorite holiday activity is making Lefsa! Thanks for the giveaway :)
We go to the Santa parade at
We go to the Santa parade at a nearby historic district to see all of the different Santas that are represented. The kids get to collect their trading cards.
We love to go see the lights
We love to go see the lights in Dyker Heights, decorate the house, and make cookies!
Yeah! I have been waiting
Yeah! I have been waiting to make my book until the first of the year - I am crossing my fingers that I win!!!
We love looking at the
We love looking at the holiday displays in the store windows on 5th Ave!
My favorite holiday activity
My favorite holiday activity is a tradition of visiting a local church to view their annual display of borrowed (from the towns people) Nativity creches of all sizes and types, showing respect for many cultures.
My favorite holiday activity
My favorite holiday activity would be attending midnight mass and also watching the Christmas Story for all 24 hours straight...my sis and I never get sick of it for some strange reason. oh well it's funny! thanks for this giveaway! :)
I love to go skiing! and
I love to go skiing!
and make gingerbread with my boyfriend and go for walks with our doxie :)
nice giveaway!
I love decorating the tree
I love decorating the tree with my sons.
Making snow angels!!!
Making snow angels!!!
We love making potato
We love making potato latkes!
We just returned from a
We just returned from a month long vacation and I would love to surprise my husband with an album for Christmas!
suzy@lorenzstudio.com
Gotta be baking Christmas
Gotta be baking Christmas Cookies
ve3smu(at)cogeco(dot)ca
We do a puzzle on Christmas
We do a puzzle on Christmas day. We get a new one each year and we don't get out of pajamas until the puzzle is done!
I love all the Christmas
I love all the Christmas sweet treats. Choc. covered pretzels are a favorite.
libertythreads@charter.net
I love setting up the
I love setting up the Christmas tree with my family!
My family and I make sushi
My family and I make sushi rolls for neighbors and friends on Christmas eve.
We always let our kids open
We always let our kids open one present on Christmas Eve - it is always their Christmas pajamas!
ryanomer(at)iwon(dot)com
Definitely the family get
Definitely the family get together on Christmas Day! Family, Fun and Feasting!
We love all the train
We love all the train displays (Citi and GCS). When we have snow we love sledding!!
I love having helping the
I love having helping the kids make potato print wrapping papper. Just by a big roll of newsprint, a few potatos & some paint & you've got amazing stuff to wrap gifts in.
every tuesday is like
every tuesday is like thanksgiving at my mothers house. my 4 siblings and I oget together with our mom. plus cousins, husbands and wives. so we bascially celebrate thanksgiving every tuesday.
i love thanksgiving. no matter what sibling of mine has to go to their significant others house we always end up having dinner together. we all bring different plates. and since everyone knows i'm not the best cook i just bring a fruit cocktail. its expected.... now that we all have children (7 between us) its going to be extra special this year.
we love to look at all the
we love to look at all the lights and decorations all over the city, NYC is visually amazing during the Holidays especially for kids
i love going downtown and
i love going downtown and watching the ice skaters. i can't actually skate this year since i'm about 7 months pregnant, but people watching is always fun, anyway! we took my 2 year old son the other day and he had never seen ice skaters before. it was quite the exciting event! thanks for the giveaway. a friend of mine was telling me about this and it's perfect for the holidays!
spending time with family
spending time with family
Making gifts for everyone.
Making gifts for everyone. One year it was painting ceramics, and last year my daughter, then 7, chose fabric and made small pillows on her grandma's 60-year-old sewing machine.
I love wrapping all the
I love wrapping all the gifts-it is my favorite thing to do!
princessfdp@aol.com
gingerbread cookies with fun
gingerbread cookies with fun designs!
Making cookies, decorating
Making cookies, decorating our house, and going to see the tree at Rockefeller Center.
do you have another code for
do you have another code for blurb ?
I like to take photos of my 4 years (almost) cousin....with the christmas tree and the lights....
Looking at Christmas
Looking at Christmas lights
Bundle up warm, make a thermos of hot chocolate & drive around looking at all the pretty lights...ohh...ahh!
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