Thursday, January 28, 2010

2009 Photo book

I’ve been meaning to post about this & keep forgetting.  I received my 2009 Year in Photos book from Blurb a couple weeks ago, which was super fast printing & shipping. It arrived much sooner than I expected.

(Lets just get this out of the way. I get nothing at all from Blurb for this post. I just like them. I’d accept something if they wanted to give it to me. The books are not cheap)

My 2009 book

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The first thing I noticed about it was that it was small. It 7x7 and probably I should have had some concept of that size but I am spatially impaired. I cannot visualize size at all. If I am shopping for purses or camera bags online I have to go get purses I already own and a ruler and then assemble them into some configuration that matches the new purse size before I can grasp how big or how small the new purse will be. I have had layout books printed in 8.5x8.5 before and just thought “oh that’s 1.5 inches smaller” But I have no real idea how big 1.5 inches is, nor did I consider that it was 1.5 on BOTH sides. Probably I should have held a ruler up to one of my existing books.

Last year I did an 8x10 landscape one. So yeah, it’s smaller than I anticipated.

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But I love it anyway. I was still able to get photos and layouts in it in decent sizes.

2008’s book photo pages

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2009’s book photo pages

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2008 with layouts

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2009 with layouts

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I like getting the full square bleed on the layouts. I had 40+ layouts with 365 photos in 2009 and that made it worth the photo size exchange.  I only had 12 layouts in 2008.  Blurb had also changed the software between the two books and I could create my own photo page layouts as well so I was able to really personalize this one.

I went with the hardbound image wrap cover and glossy premium paper again this time because the last book really has stood up well to handling by the boys.

As much as I love it, it is still on the small side for me. I had considered making the leap to the 12x12 as Blurb does not offer 8x8 or 8.5x8.5 unfortunately. But with 138 pages the 12x12 image wrap is out of my price range, being over twice as much as the 7x7.  I’m hoping that Blurb adds 8.5x8.5 as an option but I’m not sure how in demand that size is among non scrapbookers.

I’m doing my 365 Project a little differently this year. I have about 15 things that I am taking photos of every month and at the end of the year I will be creating “A Year of…” layouts for each of them. That is half the photos right there. If I can assemble the book in under 80 pages I’ll go for the 12x12 for my 2010 book.

It shouldn’t be too big, right?