What did you like most about using the OnceUpon app?
It was so easy to use, very very user friendly. I have a LOT of photos on my phone so it was difficult to scroll through to the ones I wanted and select them but apart from that the whole interface and ability to move the photos and pages around are just so basic and intuitive, I love it. I read a review of OnceUpon that said you can make beautiful books while breastfeeding your baby and you totally can! Amending and adding to my book also kept me completely distracted on boring bus journeys :) It was fun & I kept going into the App obsessively to tweak it a little bit more.
What was your book about?
I made a book for our family holiday in North Devon in June. It was my 8 month old's first holiday; sea, farm, small children.
I had thought I'd make a memory book of things that happen in the year, with anecdotes and photos added as they happen, but when I got the app I realised that would take too long and if nothing happened that I wanted to record I'd never finish it in time to give feedback.
I used to make homemade photo books after holidays but since our children were born firstly we stopped going on holiday and secondly there isn't time, so it was really nice to have a record of this holiday, especially for my 2 year old who absolutely adored it.
How do you like your first OnceUpon book?
It's fantastic. There are some things I'd change if I was ordering the same book again, like having more full page photos (because they look great & some of my other pages do have a bit too much white border) and maybe making it a bit shorter, but it's a lovely way to develop the photos of our holiday and it's going to be a beautiful memory to look back on in a few years. It's really professionally produced and looks so smart.
Did using OnceUpon inspire you to make more photo books? If so, what types of books do you have in mind?
Yes I'd definitely use OnceUpon again!
I would use Once Upon to make little books for my children. I've made my children books before by putting photos in small blank board books and adding basic text (their equivalent of the board book "Mog's Family" and another when we moved house "DD is Moving") and I'd definitely use OnceUpon instead. If they did Board Books too that would be even better!
I also might use OnceUpon to record funny things my kids do, short text accompanied by a photo, to develop into a book at the end of the year, so I can save the memories - my memory is awful so I've been looking for a way of doing that anyway, but don't want to use social media. It's so easy on OnceUpon to upload a photo and add some text to make a page that looks great, which is exactly what I need for that. This book might end up being really expensive though because you can only have one lot of text on one page spread, albeit a lot of text!
I would also use OnceUpon to make another holiday book; the only thing that would stop me would be how expensive it would be with so many pages! It would be nice and easy uploading favourite photos in the evenings of the holiday though and maybe worth factoring in the cost of the holiday ☀️
Did you try the collaboration feature? If yes, what are your thoughts on it?
I didn't try the collaboration feature because I didn't want my partner messing with my lovely book!
I got round the problem of having too many photos to scroll through & load properly in OnceUpon by favouriting my choices in my photo reel and taking photos of the reel on my partner's phone, which made it easier to select the right photos in the OnceUpon App. I do have an excessive number of photos though, especially from the month we went on holiday.
Thank you so much for selecting me to try OnceUpon Mumsnet, I had a great time constructing my book and my whole family love looking through it. I tracked it's progress through the delivery network obsessively and now it's here it's beautiful and I treasure it! 🥰