You may have noticed (or then again, maybe not LOL!) that I'm trying to blog a bit more regularly this year. This is due in part because of my decision not continue with my Project Life albums. I just couldn't keep up with the pace of the continual process of editing/printing/scrapping each week/month. I still have the latter half of 2014 that I hope to finish but honestly, I've lost my mojo.
Two years ago I decided to create a hardcover book from my 2011 blog using Blurb. I love it but I'll be honest. It was a slow torturous process. You download software to you computer, give it your blog address and it will "slurp" the data for you. Unfortunately the automatic formatting was horrible. Instead, I chose to copy and paste each blog post into my own templates and upload the accompanying photos from my computer files. IT. TOOK. MONTHS. And because I started blogging in July of that year, the thought of doing all twelve months of 2012 was just too daunting to attempt.
Earlier this year a friend posted about Blog2Print, another blog printing website. I decided to try it and wow! It literally took me 10 minutes to re-create my 2011 book. They don't offer any frills. You choose your photo size and whether or not you want to separate each entry and basically that's it. I chose the medium sized photos to maximize my space and had my printed book in about a week.
The white book on top is from Blurb. As you can see, it's a bit smaller in size than the black Blog2Print book.
After creating the first book in white, I knew I wanted the next ones to be black. Front and back cover photos are no additional charge with Blog2Print but unlike Blurb, you can't upgrade the page quality.
The next several photos compare the guts of the two book companies.
Blog2Print
Medium Photo Sizes. Compact Page Template. No Page Breaks Between Posts
Blurb
Custom Template with Extra Large Photos
Both sites offer base prices for a certain number of pages and then you pay "per page" after that. I can't say for sure but I think the prices were comparable. I do love the thicker, higher quality papers in the Blurb book but the paper quality in the Blog2Print books is absolutely fine. For the time I saved creating the books (minutes vs. months) this was a total no-brainer. I immediately had 2012-2014 printed as well.
So now, instead of Project Life, I'm making a conscientious effort to blog more often. These books are my new everyday record keepers. In fact, I think I'm going to create another full set using the large photo format so I'll have one copy for Meg and one copy for Jay's family. If you've been thinking of printing your blog, I highly recommend Blog2Print. Thanks Anita!
3 comments:
Thanks for the review!
Even though the pictures aren't as big, I think I like the Blog2Print layout better! Thanks for the review and photos showing the difference!
Yaaay! Thank you for this review! I am trying to blog this as well, and I'm trying to take more phone pics since they automatically load to dropbox. Life is so much simpler that way.
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