Are you used to writing 2013 yet? I bet you’re already seeing Valentine’s Day decor in the stores now so you know February is right around the corner! With every holiday and occasion, I’m prompted to check out the new holiday designs from the companies. I’d venture to guess that you may still be “hungover” from holiday gift shopping from Christmas so perhaps you’re looking for something more manageable when it comes to photo book gifts. Valentine’s Day especially lends itself to cute photo book designs for your honey or for your parents, grandparents or kids and there’s plenty of pre-made themes to make it easy to put together a quick but sweet little book. Also, since Valentine’s Day comes relatively quickly after the prior year’s end, also be sure to check out the “year in review” themes as well. They can make a nice gift as a recap of the prior year’s events. Below is a survey of the different themes I found, many of them new for this year. I’m working on a couple Valentine books right now for Photo Book Baby’s grandparents. You can never go wrong with a gift of grandbaby’s photos!
I usually find a lot of cute pre-made themes at Mixbook. It’s one company that focuses a lot on the digital scrapbooking style. Tons of clip art, embellishments and backgrounds lend itself towards holiday-themed photo books. In particular these were my favorite themes appropriate for Valentine’s Day, including several year in review books.
What’s great about these themes is that you can change them up any way you’d like, to add your own style and adjust the layout to fit your photos. You can also mix and match with other design elements outside of your chosen theme. So you still have a lot of flexibility while getting the benefit of a preset theme to help you when you have photobooker’s block (like writer’s block – ha ha). If you’re new to photo books, I really recommend you trying a theme for your first book. It’s really easy to upload your photos, drag and drop into the layouts and add captions.
Here’s a few more Mixbook themes:
As an added bonus, all of the photo book themes you see above from Mixbook are FREE.
Shutterfly is another company that comes to mind when I think about themes. Shutterfly offers lots of nice free themes as well as some designer premium themes in their Storytelling line for an additional fee of $4.99. You can also buy individual elements a la carte.
Here’s some of my favorites from Shutterfly:
By the way, you’ll get access to all the other themes for the flat $4.99 fee, so you can mix and match across themes if you happen to like an element from another theme. Well, with that overview of some of my top picks for ready-made photo book themes, I’m off to work on my Valentine’s Day gifts!
In terms of ongoing deals, Mixbook has 20% off all orders for first time customers who sign up for their newsletter. Shutterfly is also running a deal for up to 30% off photo books and 5o free prints for new customers. Be sure to check the deals page for the latest deals on photo books and other custom photo gifts.
Happy Photobooking!
____________________________
The banner ads and promos on this site are affiliate links. If you click on a link I may receive an affiliate commission if you make a purchase or take a specific action on that company’s site. Regardless all opinions, good or bad, are my own. For more information, please click on my disclosure found at the bottom of the page.
I’m trying to make a sweet sixteen book for my granddaughter. I have pictures from several cameras, duplicate numbers, many import dates, etc. How can I organize/number them the way I want them so they are in that particular order for the creation of a book.?
I would suggest organizing them before uploading them in separate folders and then just upload that set. I’d work on those few pages and then upload the second set. I think it’s more manageable that way. Hope that helps!