I've tried my hand at scrapbooking, but it's honestly not for me. It takes up too much space and I'm really not that creative.
Picaboo Yearbooks actually makes creating a photo album pretty simple! You can order as few or as many as you want. There are no minimums, no penalty fees, late charges or surprise fees, so there is no financial risk.
I had the opportunity to create a 20-page soft cover book. Prices start at just $8.49 for a 9" x 11" or 8.5" x 11" 20-page book, which in my opinion, is a pretty good value. There is also no minimum order and a three week turnaround. Oh, and e-Yearbooks are FREE to every school, with no obligation to print.
Picaboo Yearbooks would not only be great for schools, but for co-ops, teams, camps, clubs, and the homeschooling family in general. I wish this would have been available when we were in a homeschool co-op several years ago.
After much thought, I decided that I would chronicle Funny Bunny's school years to date {K-4}. So about four pages per grade.
Before getting started though, I looked at their Yearbook Ideas and watched a few of their tutorials. I have to say that at first it was a little overwhelming and there was a bit of a learning curve. I've used a few other digital album sites before and this format was different.
The first thing I did was create sections. I made each section a different grade, but these could be sports or subjects in a school. For a family it could be children's names.
From there I added pictures to each section. For my project I could have easily just made one section and added all my pictures to that, but this is a great way for a school or co-op to divide up the yearbook. In fact, with Picaboo Yearbooks, several people could be assigned to adding pictures, making having sections nice.
I also selected a "Back to School" background from the many they had available, and I was able to choose the picture layout for each page {you can see several options above and to the left}. Once I selected a layout, I was also able to change it, which I liked.
Below are a few samples from our yearbook.
My Thoughts: Once I figured out how to use the program it was easy, but like I said before, there was a learning curve. There was some delay in uploading pictures but that was remedied by loading fewer at a time. Overall I thought the quality of the book was nice. The cover of ours was slightly curved up due to the printing though and I haven't been able to get it to sit flat. Also, even though the price for one book is great, the shipping was $8.99, so the total cost to print and ship one book came to $17.48, which is more than I would normally pay.
Find Out More: You can find out more online at Picaboo Yearbooks. Prices start at just $8.49 for a 9" x 11" or 8.5" x 11" 20-page book. You can add pages for just $0.22 each. Ground shipping is free for 50 or more books and $8.99 for one book.
My Crewmates are also reviewing Picaboo Yearbooks, so you can check out what they think HERE.
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2 comments:
I recently used Picaboo to make a family album for my husband's brothers and sisters for Christmas gifts. I have a lot of experience creating albums on other sites. I have NEVER experienced any problems with Shutterfly or Mixbook. However, with Picaboo I had problems from the beginning. The website kept kicking me off for no reason. I would be working on my book and then all of a sudden I would be kicked off of their page. When I was placing my order the website would freeze on me. It took several attempts before my order went through. When I received my album the picture in the window was off center and other pages were misaligned. They were too close to the book binding. The picture being off center caused one of the brothers in the pic to be cut in half. After several frustrating contacts with the company I was told the mistake was my fault not theirs even though their software was not showing the crop zone for the cover. Their software stinks. When I told them that I could not give these books as gifts like this and requested a refund after sending the back, I was told that I could not get a refund and that since I used a Living Social voucher to purchase the books I was not covered under the customer guarantee. They kept saying that it was my fault when their software was not working correctly, thus giving me a book with issues. If I had not made so many books on their sites I might have believed them. But having made many books over the past couple of years I know that the issue was their software not showing a crop zone when it said it was. How was I to know my picture would be cropped funny when the crop zone does not show up even when the box to show it has been checked? I will never use Picaboo to make a photo album again. Their software and customer service are unacceptable!
Wow! I'm so sorry that all happened. I didn't have any of those problems at all. Were you using Picaboo Yearbooks or the Photobooks site? They are two different sites so the only one I've used is Picaboo Yearbooks. I don't have experience with the other. For me though, there was a learning curve, since the purpose is to make a yearbook. It works a little different than making a normal photo album. The second problem I had was when I loaded too many pictures at once, but that was fixed when I loaded less. I could easily see when a picture was outside of the crop lines, so that was never an issue. Maybe you should write them a letter. :(
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