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DominaCaeli
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| Posted: April 16 2008 at 3:57pm | IP Logged
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I'm working on a 50th-birthday present for my dad and am planning to print a book for him using Blurb.com. I've seen reviews of their "blog slurping," but I haven't personally talked to anyone who has used their services.
Anyone here have experience? How was the quality of the book? Did you have any problems with customer service?
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Celeste
Joyous Lessons
Mommy to six: three boys (8, 4, newborn) and four girls (7, 5, 2, and 1)
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stefoodie
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| Posted: April 16 2008 at 9:32pm | IP Logged
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No experience here, but it does look really good compared to some of the other services I've been looking at recently. Might give them a try too! Please update if you do, as my dd won't be ordering her "yearbook" until September or so.
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stef
mom to five
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AndreaG
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| Posted: April 16 2008 at 11:28pm | IP Logged
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I made my blog into a book using Blurb. I love it! I am planning to do it every year. The service was very good. I had trouble getting the pictures to show up and they were very helpful. I am pleased with the quality of the book- except next time I will take more time making sure the pages are layed out the way I want. I went for speed and actually getting it published this time  But any defects are my sloppy editing not the fault of Blurb!
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Andrea
GrayFamilyCircus
Read Through the Catechism in a Year- For Moms!
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Erin
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| Posted: April 17 2008 at 12:47am | IP Logged
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AndreaG wrote:
| I made my blog into a book using Blurb. I love it! I am planning to do it every year. The service was very good. I had trouble getting the pictures to show up and they were very helpful. I am pleased with the quality of the book- except next time I will take more time making sure the pages are laid out the way I want. I went for speed and actually getting it published this time But any defects are my sloppy editing not the fault of Blurb! |
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Andrea
I am very excited what a brilliant idea!
I've been over having a look, is it a case of you do it yourself for free or they can do it for $13? I'm a little confused there.
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
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RenB
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| Posted: April 17 2008 at 3:12pm | IP Logged
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I've used blurb twice to make two volumes from my blog postings. They offer a free download of their software to "slurp up" your blog posts. It's easy to download and simple to follow each prompt to accept the posts you want in your book. I agree with Andrea that the original "slurping" just prints each post's writings down a single page, complete with any photo headliner or explanations within it, offering no rhyme nor reason when reading it later on. In the process of the slurp as well, every photo gets thrown in where it best fits around the writing, and if there are many, they are compiled onto a separate page in some sort of collage. I posted my first volume on my blog here if you care to take a look;
http://goeasttheysaid.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-am-published.ht ml
I was smitten with this first volume, though I used the software to my advantage and edited, edited, edited to the tune of several weeks to get it right. Now that was me folks, don't get scared! LOL Secondly, it was a rather thick book, about 1 1/2 inches, and the cost with shipping to Canada (!) was in the neighborhood of 80.00. At first I was taken back with the price, but then I started to calculate the hundreds of photos inside, some full paged and gorgeous on photo paper and what the cost of those would be on their own. Anyone who scrapbooks KNOWS the cost of making an album, so I have to view this as a "good deal" because it is our family's journey recorded of life in a new area of the country, something for us to treasure, just like a scrapbook for heritage values.
Just to assure you I'm not nuts (LOL), I will also contribute this diddy here, that of making a second volume and the quality wasn't as WONDERFUL as the first. I'm not kidding! I hugged my first copy and so did everyone else, wanted to give it a big sloppy kiss too for all the work it took to get it to print..LOL The second copy came in the mail and when I opened it up, the center stitching was showing and very crooked along the spine and pages near to it. I was very upset about that...again, expecting wonderful once more. I wrote to the company and within one hour (I'm not kidding!), an email reply announced a second copy was already on order and would be shipped to me at no cost ASAP. It was. I got it in due time, and I was very pleased with it again, sloppy wet kiss temptations abounded here to be sure. You can see the covers of my two volumes on the right side bar on my blog if you want to take a looksy.
Finally, if there's a tidbit of information I can give to you, it would be, have patience, take your time because a project like this is something special to behold. Concentrate on moving around your photos first thing, and changing the size of the text if you prefer. The original type size was "8", and I changed all my text to an "11" first thing as well. Play! Have fun! Enjoy! And then find something to do while you wait on the postman to deliver your new baby! LOL javascript:AddSmileyIcon(' ')
Enough of me - A friend of mine also used Blurb to slurp her posts about a recent family trip they made. She was able to upload and place many of the children's writings and artwork into the book alongside and into the blog posts. It turned out fabulous! She will be doing it again.
If anyone has more questions, fire away!
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Renee
Mommy to eight, cherished treasures sent to us 22 years apart. Nana to seven lovelies...so far.
"Go East," they said
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Aggie gal
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| Posted: April 18 2008 at 8:09am | IP Logged
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Wow!! I love that idea! Will have to remember this one. 
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Amy
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stefoodie
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| Posted: April 18 2008 at 10:26am | IP Logged
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Oh yay, feedback from 4Real moms!! Renee, I love that you had pictures of pages, etc. This is exactly what we're looking for. Thank you so much!
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stef
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DominaCaeli
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| Posted: April 18 2008 at 3:39pm | IP Logged
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Yes, thank you, Renee and Andrea, for sharing your experiences--it sounds (and looks!) like the projects came out great!
I started arranging my text and pictures with their software a couple weeks ago. It's very user-friendly so far, in case anyone was wondering. I definitely see using this service for lots of other projects: gifts, photo albums, etc. My husband asked me if I could make a toddler missal for our littles using Blurb. Melanie had a great idea over at First Heralds to make a prayer book using Blurb--that's definitely on my to-do list now.
Erin wrote:
| I've been over having a look, is it a case of you do it yourself for free or they can do it for $13? I'm a little confused there. |
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Erin, it is free to download their software, "slurp" your blog (or, in my case, upload photos and text from my hard drive), and play with the arrangement as much as you like. You pay when you order a book--and the books start at $12.95. (That's for a 7x7 softcover book under 40 pages, not including shipping. Prices go up from there.) So if you want, you could try it out and see if you like how it looks once you've played around with it...and then you can decide whether to order a printed book or not.
Anyway, I'll be back in a few weeks with my complete review!
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Celeste
Joyous Lessons
Mommy to six: three boys (8, 4, newborn) and four girls (7, 5, 2, and 1)
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Erin
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| Posted: April 19 2008 at 6:27am | IP Logged
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So could you print it out yourself? Realizing of course that it would be no where as beautiful as Renee's (Renee that was incredible)
Just imagining the postage cost to Australia 
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Erin
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RenB
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| Posted: April 19 2008 at 9:50am | IP Logged
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Good question Erin. The free software from Blurb is great and like Celeste mentioned, it is user friendly! And you know, I never thought to mention there is likely a huge possibility you could print off your own text/photos on your home printer and have it all bound up at your local office store.
I remember when I decided to print off the first few pages of my first book, the dedication page and a few others, just to see if my upper right and left guide sentences were aligned right. They were. But, due to sizing, the only thing I can tip you on if printing at home would be the actual size of the book is smaller than 8 1/2 x 11 pages, as the outer text box hugs the top left corner of the page when printed, so binding would be difficult because much of it would be hidden. If you fiddle a bit, perhaps you could realign it all up and voila, yes, your own book would almost be in hand.
I forgot to mention as well, my son wrote his own story complete with art work, which we uploaded to the blurb software for editing. He was thrilled with the spell checker, especially when it found no errors (not like his mother when her fingers are flying on the keyboard, LOL) and found it very easy to upload his scanned artwork. It's still awaiting the final chapter, which is on its way. If for any reason, why not download the free software and think of the many uses for your own family.
Celeste, I especially LOVE the idea of making the items you mentioned for the children (missal, etc), and my head has been spinning with possibilities for my grandbabies. :-) I made them all a wee book from Snapfish (www.snapfish.com - the price was right, 3/9.00, something like that), filled with photos from our thirtieth anniversary evening. They were all dressed up looking so pretty/handsome, and the weeks before they kept calling me to say they were so excited about going to "Nana and Papa's Ball"...wherever they got that idea we never knew, but the little books were so precious and they cherish them so much (the very little ones' books were tucked away for when they are older.) I've also made them special books for taking to mass, using the antique holy cards from my inherited collection left to me by my grandmother, (both sides scanned on the printer because she had special notes on the back of them with her own writing, cut, placed them back to back on colored paper, laminated them, bound all up to make a booklet)and the children adore them. The big clincher was placing a photo of them with us on the last page and a hand written note telling them JMJ loves them, and so do we. These were great for preschoolers who still have messy hands, wet sloppy kisses on the holy card fronts and maybe a lick or two when teething. But, heh now my thoughts have turned towards Blurb, Blurb, Blurb! Maybe this should be a project idea in my head for when they get older!!!! hmmmmmm
I think photography efforts could take a turn here, my camera coming with us to mass for me to take photos of the parts of the mass (priest's permission of course ahead of time), changes on the altar in the liturgical year and much more. THESE possibilities can become a beautiful heritage valued book keepsake, yessirreeeeee.....my old cogs are turning!
I'm going to pass along a link on my blog to a post from a few weeks ago, one where I shared my experiences of making a book from Snapfish and Creative Memories. Perhaps if someone needs to make a gift with many photos, you'll get an idea of another type of service offered by the folks over at Blurb. Whichever method you may choose to use in the future though, Blurb is the only one I've found that can upload vast quantities of text, the others are mostly for photo keepsakes. Here's the link below;
For the Love of Marriage
How about you? Your thoughts? How many are thinking of slurping up their blogs? It's fun, fun, fun everyone! ('')
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Blessings;
Renee
Mommy to eight, cherished treasures sent to us 22 years apart. Nana to seven lovelies...so far.
"Go East," they said
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stefoodie
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| Posted: April 19 2008 at 10:01am | IP Logged
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I'm not gonna slurp everything LOL, but definitely doing something with this -- will have to sift through the blog to find the really good ones as I tend to brain-dump most of the time.
"The family cookbook" for one thing. That's been in the works forever. The pictures we've been meaning to scrapbook -- this might make it more fun for the kids since it's digital, I might not have to twist their arm so much and hubby might even get involved. And oh so many other projects -- gifts for my mom and dad, the kids' writings/stories/art, etc.
Definitely something I'd want to do for our anniversary this year -- that and a towel warmer would make a wonderful gift for hubby. :D
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stef
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Has anyone used Blurb?
