Stuff I Love: Blurb Instagram books

Now that the year is coming to a close, I know a lot of you are thinking ahead for your 2013 New Years Resolutions. One of my resolutions for the past two years was to "Take a daily photo of my kid(s)" and that I did do. At the beginning of last year, I put together 2011's photos into a Blurb Instagram book and I loved it so much that I want to share it with you guys, in case you are thinking of doing something similar.

For the first year that I had an iPhone, I would just take tons and tons of pictures, but the problem was that they weren't great enough to be printed out, and yet I didn't want to lose them in the Photo Stream forever. I decided to pick one photo that I liked best every day, had it uploaded it to my Instagram account (a separate account used solely for daily pictures) and then I organized them into months. Back when I started, Instagram only had like 5 filters, so I've been using the "Earlybird" filter (with the frame, since back then there was no option to remove it) for two years, but I'll likely pick a new filter for 2013.

Right now, I'm taking a photo of the two kids together everyday, which is proving to be quite a challenge because neither kid can sit still, but I can't wait until December 31st so I can finish up my Blurb Instagram book for 2012 and send it off to be printed and bound.

I highly highly recommend doing something like this, so you can look back and see what you did every day, and it's such a great way to recap the year. Even if you don't have kids, you can still do a "daily photo" book, it's just a really nice way to see your year in 365 snapshots. Even though this book above is from 2011, P still looks though it and points out to me what he was doing in all the photos, which is really fun. Plus, putting together an Instagram book is a lot less stressful than doing full-out photo albums.

Here are some tips on what worked for me:

1. I create a new Instagram account every year for photos, just so it's easier to manage 365 photos, than to have to sort through hundreds and hundreds of photos and pick out the ones from the year. Instagram doesn't make it easy to manage more than one account, so I just have to sign in and out of my multiple accounts.
2. I use a Calendar app (this one) on my phone so I can see what date each photo was taken since Apple doesn't make it easy to see that information and I can't remember the exact day that most photos are taken. I usually just go in once a week or so and do 6 or 7 photos at a time, doing it daily would be tedious. I title each photo with the date so it's easier to order them properly.
3. Blurb has two options for book-making. One is the online Bookify, which you can sign into your Instagram account and directly import your photos in, but managing the layout is pretty annoying. Two is the BookSmart program that you download to your computer, and you have more control over layout, but you cannot directly import from Instagram. I used the online Bookify interface, and uploaded the four photos into the page, and then change the layout to the four squares. They don't allow you to select the layout until AFTER you've dragged in the photos, so for the pages that only needed 1, 2, or 3 photos, but I still wanted to preserve the four square layout, I had to create a transparent .png image that I dragged into the blank squares. Does that sound super confusing? If you're doing it and need help, please feel free to email me!
4. If you don't have a smart phone with Instagram, you can still create Blurb books from regular digital photos, or directly import from Facebook, though I really like how neat and clean the square photos look, so I'm sticking with Instagram.
5. If you use the online Bookify, and you start your book in the middle of the year, you'll need to make sure to sign in and edit your book every 45 days, or else they delete unfinished books! I learned this the hard way, though I was able to email Blurb customer support and they were able to recover my deleted book.
6. Since this year's (2012) book will be of the two kids together, I'm printing out two copies of the book and storing the extra copy in a safe place. When the kids are all grown up, they'll each get their own copy and be able to look back at their childhood pictures. I'm doing the same for all of our family albums.

In case you are curious, the 2011 book was around 108 pages, and it cost around $50 with the hardcover and premium paper upgrade, but Blurb is always running 20% promotions so it could be cheaper.

Let me know if you make a book as well! And of course, feel free to ask me any questions :)

Happy New Year!

This is not a sponsored post. I paid for my book with my own money, I just loved it so much that I wanted to share!