Mixbook How Do I Love Thee: Let me count the ways!

Well folks this is real life, and I have not yet completed the mirror frame in the bathroom, so I have no update on that project for you. I do have a fun topic today, however, and that is Mixbook. Maybe you have heard of this awesome photo site. My favorite part of Mixbook is their amazing photo book design software. 

You might remember that my mom, here lovingly referred to as Mama Mayhem, loves Australia. Hence the birthday gift I blogged about in November. Well, she and my dad just got back from a three week sojourn down under, and Mama was itching to get her pics in a book. She came to my house for the weekend to visit and we spent most of the time on the couch with our laptops open mixbooking while chick-flicks played in the background. It was glorious! Allow me to elaborate on my love for Mixbook.

1. I love Mixbook because it is VERY user-friendly. I will be the first to admit that Photoshop and other photo editing software like it are much more powerful in terms of photo manipulation. However, with those programs there is a steep learning curve. (I took and online class before I designed our wedding book in photoshop) Mixbook on the other hand, after a bit of fiddling I was able use it. The controls are intuitive and it can do almost every command that I want!

Here is an example of the work area in Mixbook. Along the left are all your elements: Pictures, layouts backgrounds, stickers. You use the tabs to navigate and then just drag and drop to add or change. The pages are pictured along the bottom for easy navigation and you can drag and drop them to change the order of your book pages.  

2. Mixbook is VERY customizable. I may not be able to do everything I could do with Photoshop, but I can customize my project way more than on any other photo site I have tried. I can change backgrounds, crop & edit pictures, add stickers.

 When you click on an element that you want to edit these options come up. You can rotate, crop, move, add a shadow, a reflection, make it b&w or sepia, add a border, or make it transparent + many more.  Also, in this picture you can see the sticker tab where there are lots of fun stickers to use on your pages.

There are dozens of themes to choose from, but once you choose a theme, you can still use backgrounds, stickers, layouts, font from any theme. They do not limit you to one theme

3. Mix book gives you a place to start. What I mean by this is: sometimes starting with a blank canvas can be overwhelming (and time consuming). Mixbook gives you a theme and layouts to start, then you can customize and tweak from there. Sometimes I don't know where to start on a particular page, so I just choose and layout and go with it. Maybe by the end I have completely changed the layout, but having the layout in the beginning gave me the gumption to get started!

4. Mixbook saves my project online. Therefore, I can work on it on my laptop on the couch or move to the desktop seamlessly. There is no moving files or loosing work. It is saved.

5. Mixbook has great print quality. Over the years I have ordered several books from Mixbook (and my mom has ordered even more). We have always been happy with the quality of the photobooks we receive.

Here is a Mixbook that I made for my sisters last Christmas. I scanned in a bunch of super old pictures of us growing up and put them in the book. It was so special, I had one printed for myself too! This is an 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 soft cover book. The book I'm currently working on will also be 8 1/2 x 8 1/2, but I'm going to print it in a hardcover book. I'll let you know how it turns out.

6. Their prices are reasonable. My current project is a big book of all our photos of 2011. I haven't quite finished it yet (I'm putting the finishing touches on the Christmas photos). In the end it will be around 150 photos, on 35 pages, and cost about $50.  The 20 page books I ordered for my sisters were about $13 each!  They run specials all the time, I wouldn't order without a discount code!



End of the story Mama Mayhem and I love Mixbook.  Have you made any fun projects using Mixbook? Do share!