Great Gift Idea: Making a Photo Book on Shutterfly
Are you ready for the biggest news of the century? Flickr can’t do everything with your photos. Although they are GREAT at what they do, Shutterfly is better for some things.
There. I said it out loud. And honestly, it’s true. I was searching for a great Mother’s Day present for the grandmas for being so wonderful with helping care for our daughter this year. That’s when I saw an ad for Shutterfly’s Photo Book telling me to “express your creativity and showcase your favorite photos with a Hardcover Photo Book that you customize, from cover to cover.” And it was on sale! How could I resist?
Of course it seemed like a great idea. The only problem was that all of my photos were already stored on Flickr. And that proved to be the quite a setback. I had to go through and upload about 75-100 pictures that I had previously uploaded onto Flickr. (And believe me, I tried to find something similar on Flickr — the closest they have is QOOP.) But that was the only hard part. The rest was easy. So easy, in fact, that I’m sure to make these for many other occasions.
I’m not a scrapbooky kind of girl, so this is perfect for me for many reasons. First, I don’t have to actually make prints of my photos. Great! Because that’s one thing I rarely do. Second, I don’t have to pick out cutesy backgrounds. With this photo book, you can choose from a variety of set templates, from casual to elegant, baby to wedding. And you can choose from multiple layouts for creativity, giving you the choice to have from one to six photos on each page. I love that kind of variety. That made my books look much more personal. I think I had the most fun, however, thinking up fun captions. As Shutterfly says, “Your photos tell a story, your captions make it personal.”
The books are around $30 (for the first 20 pages), but look for sales. I got mine during their Mother’s Day promotion for less. And I’m sure they’ll be having more sales soon, with graduations and Father’s Day approaching. And because you can put so many pictures on a page, 20 pages was perfect for me.
The book above is one of my actual works of art. That’s how it is displayed on the website when you ask to view your book. My mom and baby look so professional! The pictures below are of the grandmas admiring their books on Mother’s Day.
Still unsure? Go to Shutterfly’s website and check out the cool Flash demo, and you’ll be sold.




Responses and Conversations
What is the print quality like? You might have seen in my review, I ordered a book of some flickr pics from Qoop and I was really disappointed to find the pages being laser print rather than looking like photographs or even magazine quality
Comment by Chris Garrett on May 17th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Thanks for the info, I’m sure they loved their books. I’ve been wanting to do a “bug-book’ for my niece for a long time, now you’ve provided the inspiration, I have to get it done!
Comment by jimmyD on May 17th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Jim - cool idea! With your photos, you could easily get one published commercially, and we’d totally buy it for our girl.
Comment by Chris Frazier on May 17th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Jim - yes, Sophia LOVES bugs! She’s loving her “Sophia bee” shot on her wall!
Chris Garrett - the print quality was really nice. The paper they used is quite nice (pretty thick, but not too bulky), and as long as your resolution is high enough, they print out great!
Comment by Amy Frazier on May 17th, 2006 at 10:34 am
well it looks like I have a few things to get done after the house is finished (soon!!!). Glad Sophia likes her bees!
Thanks to Chris G too for the info on Qoop.
Comment by JimmyD on May 19th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Oh - this looks really nice. I HATE making albums so this is right up my alley. Thanks for the tip.
Comment by Amy on July 9th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
This kind of photobooks are great idea. It’ s the perfect gift also for mom’s day!
Comment by fotobuch on July 28th, 2006 at 8:01 am