Saturday School - Printing Layouts

Happy Saturday everyone! Terra here with another Saturday School topic for you. Now that I have created quite a few layouts I have started to research my options for printing. Once you decide the size you want to print (often 12"x12" or 8"x8"), there are generally two options - printing professionally bound photo books or printing single pages and adding them to an album.

Photo books are great for a commemorating a special event or if you are a chronological scrapbooker. I know I would love to create a wedding photo book and a book to celebrate my baby's first year, just to name a few! But for the most part, I am not a chronological scrapbooker so photo books intimidate me and I have been looking for other solutions.

I really like the idea of creating albums similar to the albums that traditional scrapbookers create. They look very durable as printed pages are protected by page protectors and pages can be reorganized whenever necessary. There are a variety of albums on the market with different covers and binding options to suit anyone's needs. There are traditional D-ring binder albums that are simple to use if you add/remove pages frequently. Expandable post-bound albums can be more time consuming to add/remove pages because you have to take the album completely apart to reorganize pages. I have heard that you can make this process easier by replacing the metal posts with a product called snaploads.

Classic 12x12 D-ring binder from We R Memory Keepers

As for vendors, I have heard a lot of good things about Persnickety Prints. I honestly can't remember hearing anything negative about their quality or service. They offer single prints, photo books, calendars and more.They currently have a deal on Facebook for 25% off of 12x12 prints. But hurry, the deal is only available to the first 300 customers.

Of course you may remember that Jennifer did a review on Lulu photo books a little while ago. If you missed it, you can check out her review here. Jennifer was very impressed with her photo book and gave them a great review.

Page from Jennifer's Lulu Photo Book

Shutterfly is another great option for either photo books or prints and if you take the time to look for deals you can often find a coupon on the web for a low priced photo book.

I hope that you have enjoyed this Saturday School post. Let me know what you thought of it in the comments. Do you print photo books or single pages? Have you used other vendors for printing your layouts?