I had my very first 12×12 Shutterfly Memory Book printed a while back, and I’ve been wanting to share my photos and experience, so I’m glad to finally have the chance 
. I had printed some of the other sizes in the past and loved them (see the end of this post for more information about those), so I was really excited to see how the larger size would turn out!
Ready for some photos? Here’s the cover I designed – as you can see, I made a mosaic of some of the pages contained in the book, which I think turned out well:
This is what the inside cover looks like. The image from the front cover wraps around to the inside. That’s why it is important that you don’t have any important details of your cover image right on the edge, because they won’t be showing on the front of the book.
Here’s the first page of my book, I was amazed at how much more beautiful this page looks printed than on my computer screen!!!! In fact, all of my pages looked so much better to me in print .
A Couple of Tips:
Tip # 1: Like the front cover image, the images in your book will be cut off a bit around the outside edges (although not to that extent). For this reason, it is recommended that you not include important details or text right on the edge of your pages. HOWEVER, many of the pages I included in this book had been made before I knew I would be printing them in a Shutterfly book, so (as you can see in the bottom right of the image below) I had text going right up to the edge. My solution to this problem was to size down all of my images slightly, and place them on a black background. I was happy with the look and very glad nothing got cut from my pages .
Tip # 2: Even WITH the added border, text on the edge of the page will be difficult to read if it is on the inside border, because the pages curl in toward the binding, as seen below. So just keep that in mind .
A Couple of Ideas:
Idea # 1: I really wanted to include ALL of my pages in this book that had not been previously printed, but there was one problem, some of my pages were smaller than 12×12 size! The solution was to place four 6×6 layouts together on one page like the example below. I even made some of my 12×12 pages this size to save space (and money) in this book.
Idea # 2: I had made some of the beautiful calendars by Shabby Princess as Christmas gifts in December, so I decided to include the calendar tops as pages in my book as well. This way, they can be enjoyed beyond 2008 – and the calendars are so pretty that the tops really can work as stand-alone pages. Since they are 8.5×11 size instead of 12×12, I placed miniatures of some of my layouts along the bottoms of the pages. How? I designed the whole layout of these pages in advance, flattened them, and uploaded them to Shutterfly just as you see them here.
I am SO happy with this book, as with the other Shutterfly books I’ve made, and I KNOW I’ll be making more in the future ! If you want to read more about Shutterfly photo books, you might like these other articles I’ve written:
Review: Shutterfly Photo Books (This one includes more info about the whole process, plus tips and tricks).
New Look and a Shutterfly Book (This is a post about one of the 8.5×11 books I did, but I guess I never posted photos of the actual book. I’ll have to do that, because this is my favorite of the books I’ve made so far!)
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