loose pages vs bound books
 

I have hundreds of pages that I haven't printed. Like thousands of dollars worth of pages. I"m trying to decide if i should make books out of them or just continue to print pages when i get extra money, like 10 or 20 at a time.

I'm not a chronological scrapper so I always do loose pages. I print at persnickety when they have a sale or when budget allows.

I scrap in half chronological and half not. If I'm scrapping for a specific kit, it's whichever pics work for it, but if it's just me, I try to scrap the back end up.

I prefer books. No loose pages. And I want all my books to have the same size. I like the look of printed books on the shelf.

I LOVE my bound books, but the problem with bound books is that if you open it up and discover that you, say, forgot to replace the butterfly on the template or misspelled your title or have some glaring error that eats at your soul, you can't just reprint.

I have both, but now the only things I print by page now are like reflection pages, AAM, etc. Anything chronological goes in a bound album.

Just on a practical side, books are much cheaper than loose pages. Shutterfly now does an unlimited page add-on sale once in a while and you can print out a ton for a very reasonable price. How about instead of going by chronology of the events, go by the order you scrap them? Then you'll always have something print.

I don’t know if I will ever catch up on printing :D:crying:

I print loose pages. I've been scrapping for a long time and my albums are a mix of physical pages, printed digital pages, and all sorts of memorabilia. I love my albums; however, I do sometimes wish that I had a neat row of photo books on the shelf instead of big, clunky albums.

Do you have any time periods that you consider "done"? Maybe you could print one photo book and see how you like it.

I had that happen to me once... a typo in my title. It sucks. But luckily nobody else noticed. But it is not fun at all.

I only do printed books. I don't scrap chronologically but the pages are put into books chronologically so sometimes it can be years between when I do a page and when it ends up in print. I have a pretty fixed plan for what I scrap - an annual family album, books for each of my boys where each book covers about 3 years of their lives and a holiday album which, since we rarely take big trips is a collection of all the mini-holidays we take (the first one of those covered about 10 years!). These are all chronological and I limit them to 100 or so pages (for budget reasons).

I scrap way more pages than this though (i.e. CT/Babe ones), and these are very random (I even re-scrap photos I've done before). Earlier this year I decided it would be nice to see some of them in print so I made a book of random pages which I called "Family Scrapbook Volume 1" (within the book they are chronological). It was about 150 pages and I printed it when there was a super deal on. One day I will do a Volume 2, etc - they will overlap in time but given they are all completely random pages I don't mind... and I absolutely LOVE how Volume 1 turned out!

I print mine in books, that way I get the same size (12x12 for PL years and 8x8 for vacation albums). Also I like that they are all in one, slimmer size than a full loose pages album. For the kids' albums that I keep working on whenever there is time, I just keep the pages I finished until I have them all done, then I'll print them in books, one for each kid, one per year.

This is what I do
BUT reconsidering because the 3 ring albums take up so much space! And I think Bound Books are cost less.

I print individual pages, 8x8 size because they're cheaper. I wait until Persnickety has a sale, then I can get them for 75-80 cents each. I don't scrap chronologically, I have albums I put them in that are organized by year, but the pages inside aren't in order.

Even though I'm usually pretty obsessively organized this works great for me, lets me keep it on the creative side instead of being obsessive over if I got all the events in a year before I print. I name my pages with the year-month (so like 2017-12) so that it gets printed on the back of the loose page, that way they seem to come back to me in chronological order and I can slip them in albums easily.

My books are a hot mess. Not chronological at all, but at least sorted by the year. So, as I scrap I drop the finished pages (print resolution) into a folder with the year on it. Once I get enough pages in that year's folder I print a book. I've found that this is the only way I am getting anything printed. If I try to sort the pages I realize I'm missing something I haven't scrapped yet and it derails me and I miss the coupon or don't print. So now I'm just going to be relaxed about it... print what I have and save the other events of the year for future books.

I have found that printing individually takes up more space than printing a bound book. So for me, I print 100-pages at a time. In Jan/Feb, I hope to print 3, maybe 4 albums that have been sitting on my harddrive collecting dust while I waited for the budget to allow such printing. But those 3-4 books will only take up 1.5" on our shelf rather than 5-6".

thanks for your opinions ladies! I love the loose pages, but the books are so heavy and huge.

Given how many pages you have unprinted, I'd go for books. They're cheaper to print, so you'll be able to get more pages printed.

I personally couldn't print a book that had random pages from 10 different years in it--it would drive me nuts not to know where to find a particular printed page if I was looking for it. So if it were me, I'd organize by year and then print randomly within that year. (For example, Book 1 could be any 30 pages from 2016. Book 2 could be any 60 pages from 2008. Book 3 might be another 40 from 2016, and so on.) Or maybe you'd want to print a book for each child plus a family book , and you'd choose 30 of your favorite pages from birth to the present for each book and put them in chronological order.

Recently Groupon had great prices on vouchers to print Shutterfly books. I can't say for sure yet how the shipping and handling will affect my total cost because I won't be redeeming mine for another week or two, but that might be worth looking into. I think they offer Shutterfly vouchers frequently. Also look for the unlimited additional pages sales that one of the other ladies mentioned. You pay for a 20-page book, but you can put 100+ pages in it.

Enjoy seeing your pages in print!

Oooh, I only print books but to be honest it's so hard to scrap chronologically that I rarely print. I might try to print just the year because otherwise I'll never print!
Sarah, I love your new siggie! So happy for you ��

I do books. I mostly only finish vacation books rather than a full year album, but I've been scrapping random things throughout the last few years and it's been making me crazy that there was no end in sight for getting those pages in my hands.

To remedy this, I went through all of my photos for a year and wrote out a list of the stories I most want to tell for that year, interspersed with the layouts I've already done. The list has two columns so I can see what pages will be next to each other in the photo book and how long the book will be. I crossed off the pages I already have done so I can see the gaps. And tbh, in looking at the list, there are definitely stories that I can tell matter less, so if I reach a point where I'm getting antsy to have a book in my hands, I may just skip them and call it good. I've already cut down a lot of stories from 2016, but I know there are two more critical ones before I can send that book off. I also like seeing the gaps I have so I can know where to focus my scrapping when I know I want to create but don't much care what I make.

Thank you so much Anelia! :wub:

THanks to your input, I've sorted all my pages to be printed by year. I will have to look into the unlimited pages sales for the books.

What printer do you have that prints 12X12? how much is the paper/ink? this might be something I'd want to do after I catch up printing

For this year and last year's PL, I haven't printed them yet because when I watched persnickety's ad, they said that on photonooks there is a chance that as you always open the book, you could rip it or someone else unlike when you print loose pages and insert them in a plastic insert (like that of the PL), it's safe. And it's true, my 4 photobooks has rip on them because of how my daughter opens them. Since I am a photobook person, I am still battling on how should I print them. I wanted them to last but the ocd in me took me this long to decide.

This is a great idea, Grace!

so far, i've only printed books, but i put together my books by event or season - e.g., "2008 asia trip", "summer 2015", "jamison's first 6 months", etc. so those are scrapped chronologically. i also have a bunch of random pages scrapped that don't fit into any such category. i bought some 8x8 albums with page protectors specifically for those... so i *will* get those printed as individual pages... someday. :unsure:

Books for me, but I don't always scrap chronologically, but I wait to print chronologically.