Blurb book

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Europe Blurb Book

I put together a blurb photo book of our Europe trip and finally received the finished product.


I ordered the book from blurb and used their design it yourself templates for Adobe InDesign. This is
the program that I use at work all the time, so I am comfortable with
the software and the templates were very easy to use. The album I made is a 12"x12" hardcover book. I set up each
page with a 3x3 grid of 4-inch blocks and then added and resized my
pictures to fill the blocks. Some photos fill one block and others fill
up to 6 blocks of the page. It was a little overwhelming to fit all of
the pictures in the book, so coming up with a simple grid to use made
the book easy and quick to put together.


Europe Blurb Book

I stuck with one color bar for each city that we visited and added
some of the text from my blog entries and some of my own additional
commentary. Friends and family are having fun playing "spot the typo."
Luckily only two have been found so far!

Europe Blurb Book

Blurb was great to work with. I used Blurb for my parents'
anniversary album earlier this summer. For the Europe book, I used the cover wrap option which turned out nicely. For my parents' album, I used the dust jacket option, which turned out nice too. Here's two tips that I
discovered myself through purchasing two books and through reading
Blurb forums.

1. Don't pay to upgrade from Standard to Premium paper - it's not much of a quality jump to justify the cost.




2. Don't pay $15 extra to remove the blurb
logo from the last page (custom logo option). I was able to tear out the final logo page
myself for free (blank white page with a tiny logo at the bottom
center).

Europe Blurb Book


Europe Blurb Book

Europe Blurb Book

Europe Blurb Book

Europe Blurb Book


For past trips, I have just put photos into 2-up or 3-up albums
and written captions and information. The scrapbooks and photo albums
are starting to take over our house, so getting a photo book like this
printed is a great space saver for the amount of pictures that it can
include. It fits easily on our bookshelf and is only about 1/2" wide.


A coworker of mine has had great success using Walgreens for photo
books, too. She came up with the best idea for creating a yearly album.
She started a new book on January 1 and adds pictures to her online
album layout throughout the year when she has a chance (once or twice a
month). At the end of December, she'll have a complete album with all
of the pictures she's taken this year included in it and won't have to
scramble around to remember what she did or where she misplaced photos
of a certain event. I think I'm going to try this method out for 2010.

23 comments

  1. That looks so great - and what a good idea about a yearly book!

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  2. that looks so great! Maybe that's what I'll do with the bazillion photos we ended up with from Alaska!

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  3. Cool! I like the idea of working in InDesign too. We have so many pre-digital and post-digital photos floating around. It sure would be nice to have them all together in one place. I love the idea your friend uses. I think I'm going to have to look into that! Thanks for the review on Blurb.

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  4. Thank you so much for writing a review about Blurb. I've ordered a book through Apple's Aperture that turned out great and one through Shutterfly that I wasn't so thrilled with. Yours looks great. The different colors for each city is a fantastic idea.

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  5. Your book looks awesome. I love the layout. I've used Shutterfly, perhaps I'll give Blurb a try, also.

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  6. Fantastic! I like your friend's idea too. I want to do a couple of Blurb books, but just don't have the time, so doing it 'as I go' really appeals. And duh, why didn't I think of that myself? Now you've spurred me on, I might just get that wedding book done (it's only been nearly six years!!)

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  7. What a beautiful book! I love that you color coded the cities.
    I use blurb with our family blog every year and love it. I take the photos and text yearly from Jan 1 to Dec 31 and publish them as a family blog book. Blurb is great for desktop publishing and I've always been happy with the quality. One of the best parts is that I can compile it anytime (last year I didn't get around to the 2008 book until April). I love having a little summary of our year at my fingertips and on our bookshelf.
    I haven't done one for my knitting, but maybe one day I'll have to make a FO book. I wonder if I can slurp my content from ravelry?

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  8. I've used blurb once so far to turn my blog into a book. It's so easy because it will slurp all the posts and photos right over to blurb and then you just have to arrange it. I did have to copy and paste my comments because they didn't transfer. It made such a beautiful book and I plan to do it once a year (my husband gets this for me for my birthday). It's such a great book for all my projects and it doubles as a baby book for my son, since I started my blog when he was 3 mths old. Your book turned out beautifully! Love how you color coded the different places you traveled. :)

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  9. That's such a great idea! Holiday pictures always get lost in the recesses of my computer. And I do like the idea of a yearly record in pictures too.

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  10. thanks for the tips... and this genius idea! i need to make something like this for my trip to india from last year...

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  11. that is a very great idea! mi cousing en Colorado did the same thing for her wedding pictures... i dont know if we have these service here.. i hope so...

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  12. The book looks wonderful! I was thinking of making a book for Melody's first year. Your friend is so smart. A little at time is so much easier than all at once. Maybe that's why I haven't done it yet.

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  13. Great tips -thanks!
    And your photos look amazing - awesome layout!

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  14. This is AMAZING. I am SO impressed. Something like this just may get me into scrapbooking, lol - so much easier! I would dearly love to do books like this for my boys.
    Wow.

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  15. oh man that book is awesome!! i love the color coding, it just looks fantastic!
    now i want to abandon all my other plans for the day and make photobooks so i can be just like you!

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  16. Your book looks fantastic. Blurb is my idea of scrapbooking. I've been thinking about making a book myself, trying to decide between Apple, Shutterfly, and Blurb. There are too many options. I didn't know that blurb had an In Design template. That definitely sways my opinion. I'm all about having control over my design.

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  17. Super idea! And thanks for the money saving tips :) this will be a nice memory!

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  18. I'm making a blurb book now, so thanks for the tips! Your book looks amazing.

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  19. I've always wanted to make up a blurb book--thanks for the inspiration and suggestions. I love the idea of a yearly book-I might try that for 2010 (is it really so soon?!?) Have a great Thanksgiving!

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  20. what a great idea to make a blurb book to commemerate your trip. i love how you color coded things. it's wonderful!

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  21. what a brilliant idea! it's gorgeous!

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  22. How'd I miss this one? love the blurb book...great idea!

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