Wedding Scrapbooks | A Small Blurb Book

One of my favorite things to scrapbook, even almost 2 years after the “event” are my wedding photos– both the “real” photos we got from the wedding, and the photobooth photos that happened at the event (sidenote: renting a photobooth was the best. idea. ever. I cannot recommend it enough).  I loved my wedding colors, I loved the great times we had with the bridal party, and I loved the fact that we stood up in front of everyone we loved and made a lifelong commitment. And then threw a huge party afterwards..

All of that to say, I will never (at least, right now) pass up a chance to document our wedding day. Our wedding scrapbook will never be “finished” and I will always jump at the chance to print pictures of the wedding … or create a photobook!

Which is where Blurb comes in.  I’ve been meaning to make a Blurb book with some of our favorite wedding photos, but I just didn’t have the time to sit down and obsess think about what pictures to put in. But then! Blurb offered me a chance to try out their new Designer Collection with a small 7×7 book and the wedding bells started ringing.

So what is the new designer collection? From Blurb: Create a quick, high-quality Small Square book with one of our six designer photo book templates and our streamlined drag-and-drop process.

Choose one photo to highlight per page, switch photo orientation, add captions if you wish – even import photos from Facebook and Instagram. Easily switch between templates to choose the one that matches your style, click order, and you’re done.

Our new Designer Collection photo book templates were created for us by editor, designer, and photographer Laura Brunow Miner. The founder of Pictory, an online photojournalism magazine, Brunow Minor also runs Phootcamp, an annual photography retreat, and was included in “Most Influential Women in Tech” in 2010. Laura has brought her passion and experience to create these elegant, fun templates for people who want to feature their favorite photos, from wedding to travel to fine art, in style.

Sounds super easy, right? Yep! I’ve done other Blurb books in the past that have taken me hours– not because their site isn’t easy to use, but because I am a perfectionist and spent way too much time adjusting everything I could from the font to the size of the pictures to the backgrounds… and with the designer collections, it’s all done for me. The hardest part was choosing which of the collections to use.

I ended up going with the Austin template, just because I loved the look of the background (it almost looks like a chalkboard!) and I love how that offset the look of my pictures that I included. I made this book JUST about the pictures. No journaling. No text. Just one picture per page.  And I love it!

Here’s the book that I ended up with: 

Some thoughts about the book & the Designer Collection:

• The book is gorgeous– gorgeous prints, gorgeous quality… I love it. It’s so well made and PRETTY.
• I love the cute size for just sitting on the shelf.
• The “Collections” are absolutely gorgeous. It was crazy hard to pick one.
• The book was super easy to put together and drag and drop the photos in… and they stayed in order!
• My only “negative” to the book was the lack of customization..  And I feel like this is totally on me, because I like to have full control over my photo books– which Blurb is great for with their BookSmart software and InDesign plug in– those let me have total control. The Designer Collection had limited options, which is great for making a super quick book, or for someone who doesn’t WANT to change a lot.  I actually left that white strip on the front of the book blank (you could put text/a title in there), because I didn’t like how the text looked. I’ll probably put a title in there later with my Silhouette or some hand lettering. Again. Full control. I needs it.
• But the quality. OH THE QUALITY. I love it. I keep looking through it because it’s so pretty 🙂
•  Final thought? I love it! 

Want to make your own Blurb book? Save 15% through 3/31 with the code SPRING15OFF.

*I am a Blurb affiliate, so when you click through my links, you’re helping support Alexandra Rae Design!
* My wedding photos were done by Elaine Davis.