Digital Scrapbooks
Photo memory books
Digital scrapbooks or photo memory books made it so easy for me to record my stories after my husband died. I now create them regularly for each year of my son’s life, as well as special vacations we take. Recently for my niece’s birthday, I made her a personalized story book of an imaginary adventure she and my son took in pursuit of dinosaurs. It included photos from our vacation with their family, which ended in a dinosaur museum.
People ask me which online memory book company I use when I create a memory book. I have used two Picaboo
and Blurb. But now I'm most impressed with My Memories Suite.
What I love about Picaboo
- extremely easy to use
- one of the best programs for beginners
- free software to download
- easy to follow tutorials
- over 90 page layout options
- over 15,000 free custom backgrounds, in other words whether I am doing a book for my son or my grandmother, I always find beautiful backgrounds that fit the feel of the book
- they frequently offer great coupons
- great quality books and pages
- books as low as $9.99
- higher quality book options for those once in a life-time events
- great customer service, after a computer crash they spent hours on the phone with me, restoring old photo book files to my computer
- they provide web space to send your book to friends and family for online viewing
What I love about Blurb
- believe it or not I’ve come to the place where (for some books) 90 layouts doesn’t feel like enough for me, with Blurb, the options are limitless as you can edit any layout. However, with more freedom there is much more room for error. Blurb may feel difficult and overwhelming to learn if this is your first time creating digital scrapbooks.
- I like the text flow-over from page to page. Again more of an advanced feature that can be a bit difficult to deal with for first timers.
- Blurb provides much more freedom to be creative and do your own thing, just remember where there is more freedom there is also more room for error.
- prices for larger books are slightly cheaper, but they have less coupons and no small photo book options
- greater page allowance before price increases
So my general recommendation for online memory books are:
- start with Picaboo
for easy to make, high quality, beautiful photo memory books if (and it doesn’t always happen) 90 layouts starts to feel confining and you want to expand your creative capacity give Blurb a try.
An Update with My New Fav:
If neither of these options seem like a fit for you, I've been reading great reviews about My Memories Suite. This is a software that you buy, but then you have a lot more freedom about where and how you can print your pages and books. It also has many more features the free software doesn't have. Some highlights of what has been attracting me to this program:
- easy to learn and use
- similar basic features to the above programs
- options for using pre-made templates for ease of use or make your own templates for a unique style
- options of printing pages from your own printer or other online printer
- includes ability for you to make dvds from your photos and pages
- reviewers say the tech support is great
- there is a money back guarantee, so if you buy it and discover it isn't for you there is no loss
Read my My Memories Suite Review. Or watch their promotional video:
Get more digital scrapbooks ideas at my Make Memory Books page.
Photo memory books also make wonderful Visual Grief Jouranls. Other articles related to photo memory books:
Return from Digital Scrapbooks to Journey-through-Grief homepage
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Grief Journal Scrapbook
Memory Book
Personalized Sympathy Gift Memory Book
Scrapbook Journaling
Memories Scrapbook
Starting a Memory Book