DIGITAL BOOKS - COMPARISON (AND A NEW PAGE)

I just got 2 more albums back from the printer and let me tell you, it was like Christmas morning!!! I love getting my pages printed and in my hands. I love flipping through the pages and looking at the photos, reading the journaling, reliving the memories, and remembering once again why I do this!! I LOVE memory keeping, in all forms, journals, notebooks, pictures, scrapbooks, whatever that means to you. I love recording and preserving me and my life. My son always teases me that I take a picture of EVERYTHING and I tell him that I want to me able to look back and remember everything that happened when I'm old and I've forgotten. {that might be truer than I want to admit!!}.

When my BFF MaryRuth introduced me to digital I was SO AGAINST IT, I loved printing my pictures, working with paper and glue and making beautiful layouts. I wanted to hold them in my hands and see the pages come together in front of me.....fast forward a few years and LOTS of pages later....I HATE real paper pages now. It hate getting out the mess, I hate being limited by the size or shape of something, I hate being limited to my one piece of patterned paper and my one sticker that is perfect for 3 different pages. Digital Scrapbooking has changed the way I keep my memories and I wouldn't have it any other way now. Thank you MR for convincing me that it was ok to do my pages on the computer. My printed books are AMAZING!!!!!!! {I still do traditional projects every once in a while and I still love printed pictures on my walls all the time!}

I took some pictures of my books and will add a little of MY opinion about them and the printing and quality. I have printed the last 4 albums I've done through BLURB, prior to that I was using SHUTTERFLY. The MAIN reason that I switched is that you can only print up to 104 pages on Shutterfly {unless they have changed this recently} and you can print up to 240 pages on Blurb. {You can actually print more than that, but 240 is the max for the premium paper, which is what I get}.

Here is what I like about Blurb:
Matte Cover
Can fit up to 240 pages
Paper feels thicker
I like the gray end pages (personal preference)
Color seems a little more true to life
Binding is nice and square and good quality
I like how it opens, the spreads fit nicely across two pages.
Their software is installed on your computer and you put your book together offline and then upload it all at one time. You don't have to be connected to the internet once you've downloaded the software.
Their software is easy to use and understand

Here is what I like about Shutterfly:
More sales during the year
Free books occasionally (mostly 8x8 albums)
They have an 8x8 album {blurb doesn't offer this size, but they do have 7x7}

Here are some photos of my four newest books (printed at Blurb):

Here are a couple close up pictures of some of the details (again, these are all Blurb)

These albums have the following number of pages L-R: 2016 Album 152 pages, Tanner's Album 114 Pages, 2015 Album 128 Pages, Mom's Cancer Album 164 Pages.

For Tanner's HS album, I saved all of the digital pages I've made about him since his Freshman year and printed them all in one album for him to keep {not like he's not going to inherit ALL of my books, but it's fun to have them all together in one album}. This is ANOTHER reason I love digital, I just saved them all in a folder and reprinted them in his book, I didn't have to remake anything or do two copies of anything because they are digital!!

Here are some pages inside the albums:

Here are a few pictures of my Shutterfly books to compare. I don't really have anything against Shutterfly. I've always liked their services and their product is not poor quality. I just feel like Blurb is a little better quality and it's sometimes even cheaper to go through Blurb when they are having a sale. {BTW, the BEST time to order from Blurb is Black Friday, they have a 50% off sale that weekend and it's the cheapest I've ever seen their books!}

OVERALL: I am just excited that I have printed, finished books!! I don't worry too much about making them perfect. I don't stress about mistakes, mis-spelled words, missing pictures or changing trends. The most important thing for me is getting pages finished and printing them out to look at and enjoy. Has my style changed? MANY TIMES. Would I do things differently on some pages? FOR SURE. Does it matter? NOT AT ALL!!!

Look at this amazing stack of finished, printed albums I have on my shelves: {this doesn't even include dozens of 8x8 books I've printed!!} And this only starts in 2012.

ANOTHER REASON I LOVE DIGITAL:

This is 5 years worth of pictures, including several books of 365 Projects and it takes up WAY LESS space than my albums used to take up on my shelves.

AWE, what a pretty sight to see!!

If you made it this far, you're a real friend!!! Thank you for love me and supporting me and cheering me on....here is a page I just finished for my 2017 Album.