THE PRIZE
Two lucky readers will each win a Blurb bookmaking gift certificate for $36.95, enough to get you a whole lot of pages in any of their selection of sizes. Yippee!
MY REVIEW
I am thrilled to announce this giveaway because I just finished my own Blurb book and I can’t wait to click “PUBLISH” and get it in the mail! I decided at the end of last year to focus on blogging instead of scrapbooking all of my pictures and our daily lives because I was falling further and further behind. At this stage in my life, blogging is much more practical than scrapbooking and preserving our stories and memories is more important than using pretty paper and fun embellishments. Blurb is my printing solution!
So what is Blurb?
Blurb (www.blurb.com) is a creative publishing platform that enables anyone to design, publish, share, and sell affordable, bookstore-quality books. Download Blurb’s free book design software, BookSmart, to design your masterpiece. The minimum order is 1 book, and you can expect to receive your book within 7-10 days of ordering it. {from Blurb.com}
What this doesn’t tell you is that books are available in 5 sizes and begin at $4.95, that there are video tutorials to help you get started, or that you can “Slurp” your blog to the free software for the easiest transformation from blog to book possible.
When you first start in the software, you choose which blog(s) you want to slurp (Typepad, Blogger, WordPress, and more) and then which posts from that blog, and it automatically uploads all your titles, photos, text, comments, and date stamp into the software. From there you can mix and match and swap and play until you’re totally satisfied.
Besides slurping, my other favorite thing is how customizable each template is. They have dozens of preset text and photo templates for you to use with all different numbers of photos and placements, but you can also edit their templates or create your own to make things look just exactly how you want them to. I edited quite a bit to make the photos as big as possible on the page and to fit as much in as possible.
The whole process was easy to learn and so fun to do! And of course, Blurb is not just for blog books, but that’s the most enticing application for me…
Here are 3 of my favorite layouts. Click on the image to view larger and see what the software looks like.
The program is intuitive and you’ll have it down in no time. (FYI,when you make your Blurb book, make sure you check the “Display Trim Guidelines” box so nothing important gets chopped off!)
This is the scrapbooking of my future. I have been able to record so much more of my family’s life blogging than I ever did scrapbooking, and I have this easy and affordable way to print it nicely.
A standard portrait size book will fit so much nicer on my bookshelf than those enormous scrapbooks do also…
The benefits in favor of printing a blog book are obvious right now – with all the money I spend printing pictures and on supplies, this is a less expensive option also.
I can’t wait to get mine in the mail and share it with my family. Thanks Blurb!
GIVEAWAY RULES
- Visit Blurb.com
- Come back here and tell me what kind of book you would make before midnight Friday, March 5.
- A winner will be selected and announced at the top of this post on Monday.
- Only one comment per person unless you earn extra entries.
- Giveaway open only to residents of the continental United States…sorry.
- Winners must email me to claim their prize within 5 days.
EARN EXTRA ENTRIES
You may earn up to 25 entries by blogging about this contest and including certain links – click here to read more about earning these entries.
You may earn 1 extra entry each for doing the following (make a separate comment for each thing you do):
- Download Blurb Booksmart and give it a go
- Subscribe to the Blurb blog
- Follow Blurb on Twitter
- Join the Blurb Facebook fan page
- Visit the Blurb tutorials page and check out their videos
- Follow me on Twitter
- Tweet about this contest with link back here (copy and paste http://www.vanillajoy.com right into the text box)
- Facebook about the contest
- Subscribe to my feed
- Sign up for my newsletter
- Add my button to your sidebar
- Comment on any non-contest post (must contribute to the conversation)
GOOD LUCK and THANKS!
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