Project Joy 365 - The Flipbook

I am so excited about this little flipbook that I wanted to share a bit more about it!

I thought creating a flipbook, verses printing a photo prompt list on paper, would be a fun tool that would help keep me inspired throughout the coming year. It was fun going through my photos from this past year and creating this mini-album. I made the pages 4"x6" size, figuring this would help keep the final cost down. After finishing the flipbook pages in photoshop, I considered a couple different options for printing and assembling.

One option was to make the flipbook myself, ordering  4x6 prints from Sam's Club for .13 cents a piece ( x 52 pages) = $6.76 (7.17 w/tax). Then, make a chipboard cover and  use my Bind-it-All to punch and bind the pages together. For a plain cover, I would probably have about an hour of time invested. If I customized the chipboard cover, it would probably be another 1-2 hours of additional work.

The second option was to use a printing service.

Snapfish.com offers flipbooks, but the maximum number of pages was 45. So that was not an option.

Shutterfly.com offers the Snapbook - I had a $10 off coupon for them so I thought I would check it out. Their price is $9.99 for a 20 page book, plus .50 cents for each additional page. The book comes with a clear, matte-finish cover. With shipping, the total cost for the 52 page book would be $28.48 (not sure if I would be charged sales tax or not. If I was, that would add another $1.71) So, even with my $10 coupon the final price was over $18.

Color Inc. - The final place I checked was the lab where I have all my layouts printed - Color Inc. They do a Spiral Bound Photo Book. The base price is $5.50 for the binding and custom cover (made from your photo or layout) plus .23 cents per page for the 4x6 size. Total price for the 52 page book - $17.46 ($18.51 w/tax). Shipping on orders over $15 is free. They also offer the option of having rounded corners.

Once I did the comparison, the decision was simple. I chose to have the book printed at Color Inc. I was pleasantly surprised at how reasonable their pricing was compared to Shutterfly (no coupon necessary either).  They have also printed all of my scrapbook pages for over a year now and I cannot say enough about their quality and their customer service. (They are also a small, Christian owned company located about 30 miles from me - which wins extra brownie points in my book!)

I could have saved about $11 by assembling the book myself, but I decided my time was worth more than that. I also fell in love with the rounded corners option at Color Inc, as I feel it gives the book a very 'finished' look. Lastly, I knew I could trust Color Inc to be very quick. I uploaded my pages on Thursday, November 18th and on Tuesday, November 23rd, my mail person was delivering them!

I can't wait until January 1st to start putting this beauty to use! In the mean time, it has been fun to watch my girls pour over the pages and enjoy a years worth of photos.

You can buy the Photo Prompt Overlays used in this flipbook as part of the Project Joy 365 - Tool Kit.

Have a great day!