A Book of My Own - Snapfish

So another story related to Dolly. I was going to China for a trip with some friends this past January. Dolly calls me and says "Barbara, do me a favor. Take lots of pictures, but just don't take pictures. Write down what you see and feel." Oh great,I thought. That's exactly the type of writing that I hate. I'm not that deep. I see a nice temple as a nice temple. Nothing more, nothing less. Still, I promised her I would. She closed the conversation with, "I promise to give you an A." Dolly.

So in the two weeks of visiting Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai,I had a half-assed journal and about 800 photos, plus another 2000 that my friends took. The first night back I sat with my parents at the computer. After about photo #500, I lost them. They started yawning. I knew I had to make viewing my photos easier.

It was then that I decided to make a book on Snapfish. My friend Cam had introduced me to their books when she showed me a book she made for her son about a trip to the beach with Grandpa. I was amazed by the quality and the price. The base price for their hard cover color books is $20 for 20 pages. You can't beat it.


My book was 100 pages. It cost me about $100 (I'll tell you in my next post on how to get cheaper). It was PERFECT. Everyone looked at the book in their own time. They read my observations and was impressed with the quality. Dolly gave me an A.

Here's how I did it:
1) Uploaded all 800 photos to Snapfish.

2) I picked a template - Cover color (RED) and used the TRAVEL background.


3) I came up with a few themes that I thought would be interesting to others and good to remember:

* Why I went on this particular trip and the story around planning it.

* What remarkable things happened (by city)...and a little about how I felt when I was there. I focused on the funny/ironic parts. The stories helped explain the photos I chose, in addition to the small details I included in the captions.

4) I used as many of the full page images I could, I added multi photo layouts to help support my storytelling.

Tips I learned in the process:

Write everything in MS Word. There is nothing worse than finding typos after the book is in print.

If you are wordy like me, get used to editing yourself. The text only template only holds about 1,000 characters. The captions are limited to about 40 characters. You got to say it concisely or get very creative on how to trick the system (I'll talk more about this tomorrow in my next post).

A large quanity (like 800) photos can make Snapfish a little (more like really) slow. Quite a few times I had to restart my computer. See if you can break your photo albums that feed the book into managable quantities. When you are done loading the photos, remove them from the photo picker section. This will keep Snapfish running smoothly.

Don't forget to save your work...often. If your computer craps out, or you click on the wrong link, your work is lost. Snapfish will then refresh back to the Project page, and you have to reload again, but the extra few seconds is better than hours of hard work lost.

If this is a real keepsake, make more than one copy. Everyone puts their grubby hands on your book. Next thing you know it looks like the worn out copy of Cat in the Hat at the Dr's office. Make two (25% discount on Duplicate orders) and put one away for safe keeping.


I made a different book this past month as a memorial for my grandparents. That's a whole other story. I'll share tomorrow.

snapfish