Shutterfly has always been a leader in online print developing.  And now they are starting to cater to us digital scrapbookers!  They have an amazing product that is easy to put together and totally perfect for printing your layouts -- hardbound photo books!  (And this is an AMAZING product for Christmas gifts.)

I was given the chance to create one of these books so I could review it -- and let me tell you a story about the day it came in the mail.

My husband is completely disinterested in my scrapbooking.  He tries to care, but he just doesn't.  His eyes glaze over every time I talk about ANYTHING to do with scrapping.
 
I got my Shutterfly book in the mail and showed it to him proudly, expecting to be ignored.  He walked over, took it out of my hands, and sat down with it.
 
"This is SO cool," he said, flipping the pages.  "I am TOTALLY impressed.  Wow."  (Which left me going . . . "WHAT?!")
 
So long story short . . . holy cow, we love it.  The book quality is amazing, the photo quality is amazing.  It's pretty much the coolest thing ever.
 
AND, he really wants to make them for family gifts for Christmas this year!  For HIS family!

Seriously?  All this coming from MY husband?  That speaks VOLUMES to the coolness and quality of this product.

The quality of the cover, the binding, the pages . . . it's a lot like a nice children's storybook you would find in any bookstore.  The photo quality of the pages is crystal clear.  Even when some of my layouts were originally created at 8x8 inches and 300 ppi -- at 12x12 they still looked amazing.  It's hard to put into words how happy and excited I am every time I look through my book.  It completely surpassed every expectation I had of it.

For a customized book, you can choose for each page to have your image -- a photo or a scrapbook page -- fill up the full page, or you can choose from several layout options.  There is a menu on the left side of the screen where you can first choose how many photos you want to work with on a page, and then choose from a number of photo arrangments.  This feature will make the book design process SO easy for someone who has never made a scrapbook before.  And for us seasoned scrapbookers?  It's a really quick way to get a book put together with REALLY cool pre-designed photo arrangements to choose from.  The book I made was 12x12.  There is also an 8x8 book option.  And landscape 8.5x11.  And 5x7!  (OH the possibilities!!!)  Also, they now have a feature under the menu where you're chose the layout -- there's a link that says "apply to all pages" -- which will allow you to very quickly make all your pages full-bleed for your layouts!

If you use one of these books to print out your digital scrapbook layouts, the cost ends up being roughly equal to what the cost would have been to print the layouts individually and put them in an album.  (And actually?  Depending on the service you use to print your layouts, these books end up being CHEAPER!!!)  I think this is especially a great way to print your favorite layouts from the previous year and give them as a gift to grandparents.  (Create ONE book and have it printed several times for gifts to multiple sets of grandparents!)  :)  I asked Shutterfly how long a completed book would stay in my account, and was told "the books will be saved in your account under the saved projects section indefinitely."  Sweet!

There are also fun books you can put together featuring Thomas the Train, Angelina Ballerina, and Clifford the Dog.  I KNOW that so many kids would love to have one of these books.  When creating the regular books, for each of many themes -- such as baby, wedding, school, and holidays -- there are multiple page background styles and colors to choose from that look great.  There's also the option of having NO theme -- just photos on a white background.

Oh, and my FAVORITE part?  The photos printed on the front AND back cover of the book!  It makes the book look so professional and impressive.  :)

The creation process:

As always with Shutterfly, uploading photos is easy and fast.  And the process for putting together the book is pretty self-explanatory once you've looked around a bit within the website.

You do have to be patient as the page changes load.  It's just a few seconds when switching between pages, the pictures per page options, and editing the photos.  And always remember to save your current changes before you exit the site!  I really liked that I could work on this book in stages, a little at a time -- and that my work so far would be waiting for me in my account when I came back.

Before you start creating your book, look on the Shutterfly website in the customer service center (link at the bottom of any page).  Under "Shutterfly Policies," click on "System Requirements."  A new window will open -- choose "Troubleshooting Photo Book Issues."  Here they explain what needs to be going on in your computer for the photo book creation process to move smoothly.  I ended up needing to update my Java Script, but it's something I had been meaning to do for a long time anyway.  Also, if you have problems during any part of the process, you can contact Shutterfly and they have wonderful customer service.

To create the book and play around on the website with the features and options is totally free -- so if you want to experiment with the page design and the look of the book, you can.  There's no charge or commitment until you add the book to your cart and place the order.

Sunni at Scrapbook-Elements has a great tutorial that walks you through the process.  Click here to view.  (But then come back and click on MY banner to get to the Shutterfly site!  LOL.)

Happy creating!!!  Click on the Shutterfly image below to get started.

P.S.  I was just thinking . . . if you are one of those digi-scrappers who has been plugging away making pages for months and months and has never actually PRINTED any of your pages?  This would be a GREAT way to jump into that!!!!

P.P.S.  I was ALSO just looking at the 5x7 book option.  A book with 20 pages has a regular price of $12.99.  That's a softcover, bound book with 20 5x7 pages.  Which means you can just have your favorite 20 5x7 photos printed in this book.  (Choose one picture per page and the full-bleed option to do this.)  Everything but the title page will let you have a full-bleed picture.  Ok, so actually that's 19 full 5x7 images.  At my Walgreens a 5x7 is $1.99.  19 prints would be $37.81.  At Scrapbookpictures.com they're 75 cents.  19 prints would be $14.25 -- this book still ends up being cheaper!

P.P.S.S -- more feedback: from "heroscraps" at DigiShopTalk -- Great Service from Shutterfly: I got the photo books I ordered and I am impressed! First of all, I ordered 5 of these on Sunday late in the day. I got an email on Monday afternoon that they had already shipped. It was my first order with Shutterfly, and I am sure they like to please new customers...they upgraded my shipping from standard for no charge. When I ordered I was told to expect the shipment sometime NEXT week. Also, I am very impressed with the packing job they do. EACH PHOTO BOOK is plastic wrapped in a box with a "crush proof" feature and then all the individual boxes are in the bigger box. I have had PRINTS sent to me from other companies that were not packed this well. The books themselves look great!  My new addiction: photo books!

 

Here are a few more pictures to show what the pages inside look like.  The first one shows a two-page layout -- notice you don't lose much at all in the binding?  It flows really well.  And the second, I put some blue cardstock behind the pages so you can see that it's full bleed -- the page on the right, I had designed the layout with a white border around the outside.