A Year of Memories with Photobox

As you may have noticed I just love taking photographs. I am not the best photographer by any stretch of the imagination and I spend many days wishing I had a better camera but I don’t let that stop me! I have thousands of photos on every device in my house and old photo albums hiding away in cupboards. I love this digital age which means than we can take photos without having to worry about using up a film, we can look at them immediately and choose our favourites, delete the blurry ones and save them all to our computers. However, it does mean that we very rarely actually print them or display them as I would have done in the past. They aren’t quite as precious as those old family photos I have lurking in little boxes all over my house.

Two years ago I decided to change that and started a new tradition; to make a photobook, a journal, for the year. I don’t really print off my photos, I have a few on the walls and obviously I share my favourites on my blog but there are plenty that don’t make the cut. Creating a photobook with Photobox is very simple, I’ve used them for three years now to create my family annual and I have never been disappointed. When they arrive through my door I am so excited, I feel like a kid at Christmas as I eagerly look through the book I created, full of memories and moments that I will never forget.

I have always found Photobox very easy to use but my photobooks are usually 100 pages so it does take a while to create. Over the years I’ve discovered ways to make it less time consuming!

• I would highly recommend organising your photos over the year – for the first time this year I am doing this! At the end of each month I take all photos off all devices, memory cards etc and put them in a file for that month. If I have time I go through and make sure there are no duplicates or bad quality photos and I am planning to start uploading these to my Photobox account. There is more than enough free storage so not only is it a great back up I will have them ready to go when I want to create my 2015 photo book.
• Buy a credit for the product you want and you get a month to create it (or more if you pay extra). This is fantastic if you spot a good deal in the sale.
• Upload all those photos in plenty of time to create your book. I upload more than I need as I like to have a selection to choose from and sometimes different photos suit different layouts better. You can now also upload direct from a range of social media accounts which is very convenient.
• Make a start on your photo book as soon as you buy your credit then you can come back and keep checking it until you are perfectly happy with everything.
• If a photo flags up as bad quality then change the layout. I had a few photos that I had to grab from my Instagram as I had lost the originals, because the quality wasn’t as good I couldn’t use them as a full page photo but they look great in a multiple squares layout.
• Add the essential photos first, such as Christmas, birthdays, holidays, then fill  up the rest of the pages. That way I make sure I get all my favourites in first and add around them.

I love that I now have three of these beautiful photo books on my shelf to look back on. I never get tired of looking through them, I take them to show family and the boys sit and look through them with me. I keep going back to Photobox as I know I am guaranteed a great service. I have never once had a problem, I have always been happy with the finished product, the options available and the high quality. I love that you can create each page to your liking, there are so many options for layouts, backgrounds, fonts and you can even edit individual photos. Once it is created Photobox email you with updates as it is being made, printed and delivered. I chose the A4 2014 photo book and it has pride of place on my shelf. It is filled with all the big moments but lots of little ones too, I have some of my favourite photos in there but I also have little grainy ones taken in the the night when the twins were just a few weeks old and sleeping side by side. I love that they will always be preserved in this photo book for us all to look back on.

Disclosure – I received a voucher for my honest review of my 2014 photo book which I had already bought and created myself.