Hello it's Valentine Series #1 : Photo Book

Sawasdee ka~

Valentine's day is just around the corner. It's a perfect time to start planning what you want to do for your loved one. For these 2 weeks post I'm excited to launch my first blog post series. I will be releasing 4 posts every 2 days on different ideas related Valentine's day. If you are interested. Stay tuned :)

Personally, when it comes to special day I would prefer making thing for my loved one rather than buying thing for him. One thing in the world that no one else could have is a perfect idea for me...thing I made. I often look for the ideas from pinterest but I've never done exactly the same things. I always combine those ideas with mines.

Last Valentine, when I was looking for an idea to make a gift for my boyfriend and went through all the pictures I had, the thought bubble popped up in my head...a photo book. Like most of you guys, I rarely ever printed out my photos anymore. I also have loads of pictures I took with my boyfriend and don't really like the idea of just keeping them in my laptop so this would be a brilliant idea to create my own photo book.

At first I wanted to print all the photos out and collage them in a book or frame by myself but as I had to study and got work loaded I decided to do something a little bit easier. I know photo book is not a new or unique idea but for me to create one book is not easy as I have to think about the theme and all little details I want to put in a book. Nowadays there are a lots of online photo printing companies to choose. After went through a lots of website I chose +PhotoBox (http://www.photobox.co.uk/) to help me create my very first photo book because they have many book options, cute stickers and themes to decorate my book with a reasonable price and easy to use.

 
For the first photo book I named it "Be my Valentine : highlight 2012". I chose hard cover book with love theme. I started with how we met and then picked the photos I like and arrange them in month order with a bit of description or some love quote. The photo above is some part of my book...just to give you an idea of how I layout my book. Few days after proceeded the order I received my first customise photo book (they also have next day delivery...if you do it in last minute). My boyfriend and I were really impressed with how quick and good quality it was. So this year I decided to do a photo book again. I actually told my boyfriend that I will make a photo book for him every Valentine to remind us how good memories we had together.

My second photo book I named it "SW&PN timeline : the world of happy memories". SW&PN come from my boyfriend and I first and last name. As in 2013 we travel a lot, this photo book is like our travel record and diary. This time I tried to keep it plain and simple by using white background with a cute illutrations from the website and a little bit of caption to make the story go smoother. Both of my photo book I end the last page with "to be continued..." because I know that our live still go on, the story continue and we will keep taking more photos :)  
Here's some tips on how to get started
❤ Edit your photos before uploading to the website. Mostly the editing tools on the website are pretty basic i.e. rotation and brightening 
❤ Look for a photo book company that allows you to edit and create your own templates so you can easily customise your photo book 
❤ Narrow down the photos you plan to use so it doesn’t become overwhelming and you don’t waste time uploading photos you are not going to use. Mines was about 100 - 120 photos for a 30-page photo book
❤ Think about what colour of background you want to use before hand. Try to keep it simple so your pictures will look outstanding.

If you like taking photo this idea might be a good option for this Valentine. I really hope you enjoy this mini series, please let us know what you think.

Mwahhhh

xxx