photos for scrapbooking - how do I get a billion photos easiest & cheapest?

[ipodrage]

ok, always intended to do this for my dc. eldest is now 12. I am the queen of procrastination

I have loads of photos on computer, but have not kept up with technology. We have got a printer that can print photos, but i need loads. I see those machines in the chemist etc but there's no instructions and they are scary.

Is there an easy, techno divmo pain free way to feet loads of photos printed off?

Or am I being really thick, and you just get them already in a book these days?

And while I'm at it, are hot glue guns invaluable?

I just make my own photobooks on photobox or truprint/snapfish. I am registered with both & look out for the special offer emails. I tend to make my books & then leave them stored on the website till the special offer.

For ease of use, I find truprint/snapfish much easier to use, I really love the magic page feature where you just click & drag as many photos as you want onto the page & then keep clicking the jumble-up (not the real term but I can't remember what they call it) button untill you like the page. It is also easy to edit your photos.

Photobox is not so user friendly IMO and I find the layouts limiting, but they seem, to do special offers more often (so I actually own more photobox books).

Both also have lots of different themed backgrounds although again, I prefer snapfish/truprint because you can mix & match backgrounds from different themes. With photobox, you can only use the backgrounds from your chosen theme.

Both also have an autofill function, where you select your photos & then it fills the book for you. I dont tend to use that feature as I like to design my own pages & also, the program tends to use just one or two photos per page so can work out really expensive if you have a lot of photos.

The downsides are that with both sites, you cannot save your photobook untill it is finished although they both have an autosave function, it is not very frequent, so make sure you dont exit the program untill after the autosave.

Also neither site seems to like firefox (which I use for internet) so I have to remember to use internet explorer

Hope that helps!

Try snapfish
When you join you get 100 free 4x6 photos iirr

BonusPrint
Snapfish
Truprint

Try them all and take advantage of their offers for 1s customers but make no mistake, initially you'll need to allocate a few hours to sort all the pictures you want to print and then upload them. But don't let this put you off, it's the cheapest way.

Photos printed at home tend to fade in time, or so I find, so it's a shame if you've made lovely scrapbook pages with them with mementos and bits...

A hot glue gun is my best friend but not to attach photos to scrapbook pages. I use double sided tape for that (get it cheaply from pound stores). Hot glue gun will allow you to attach mementos and your own decorations (flowers, tickets, cards, tags, labels, etc).

Even if you have 12 years worth of photos I would just do it, don't worry about it being perfect. Just do it.

Enjoy!

thanks so much! will be prepared for hours of 'fun'. Is it easy to upload the pictures? I guess there'll be clear instructions.

Do you recommend then printing off the photos or do most people just do books now these days? (As proud mum of pub bought a shit load of empty photo albums, full of good intentions) Now, 4 dc later, the albums are still empty. Still have the odd good intention rattling round somewhere, but technology has moved on. Photo books didn't exist when I bought the albums. Maybe I just cut my losses on them?

Ipodrage I tend to do a photobook for a special occasion eg brother's wedding, ds' first year, and then fill photo albums with all the other photos (which I get printed in bulk from photo box, snapfish etc).

Do both! Mix and match.

ok will give it a go, thanks

ah yes the time!

be prepared to lose days, weeks even!

Mine are all done as Year books, I have 2010 and 2011 to do next! I also do special ones for holidays/weddings etc as

I also prefer A4 to A3 as the A3 ones are a bit awkward to look at.

but yes, sign up for all the different sites & make sure you request their emails.

All the sites have a quick upload tool, which allows you to select & upload photos from your pc fairly easily. That bit doesnt take long but it can take quite a while for the photos to actually load on the site.