Turning Old Scrapbooks into Digital Books

Awhile back I bought a Groupon to Blurb for half off a book.

But the Procrastinator that I am, I waited til it was about to expire to use it.

My sister's have turned their family blogs into Blurb books and they turned out amazing and were really simple to do. However, I'm horrible about keeping up on my family blog so I didn't have that choice.

So I decided the quickest thing to do was to scan my old scrapbook!

For awhile now I have wanted to scan those pages just so I at least had a digital copy of it in case of a fire or I lost it somehow. It's my biggest fear to have a fire in my house and lose all my irreplaceable pictures through my life.

So I started scanning away.

Then I downloaded all those pages onto the Blurb website and seriously in no time at all I had the first 18 years of my life's scrapbook into a printable book!

On the left are 2 of my old scrapbooks. They are in 3 ring binder's with tons of thick pages of homemade pages and awards. It's pages I made starting from the age of 12 to 18 so there are definitely lots of different styles of scrap booking once I evolved. I'm at the point now where I love stuff just plain and simple, where your actual focus is on the picture and journaling. So I do eventually want to make a simple book of all these old pictures of my life with journaling of things I remember. But I'll for sure always have this scrapbook I spent a million (fun) hours of my life to look back at and reminisce.

On the right are my 2 old scrapbooks printed into one hardcover book. Huge difference in size!!

I mean wouldn't you rather pick up one little book instead of 2 bulky books that have the same exact material??

Well let me show you how it turned out!

Here is the amazing cover!:) Ha ha seriously I was a minute away from my Groupon expiring so I just quickly typed a title and left it black and white.

Here are a couple pictures so you can witness that it looks just the same as the homemade pages and to witness some of my old scrapbooking skills.;)

Look at that fancy Christmas tree !

It breaks my heart looking at it now But I seriously loved to cut all my pictures. I only hope I have doubles of all these pictures but I'm sure plenty of them I don't:(

Now I had some memorabilia stuffed inside the page protectors or taped on pieces of paper. So I just scanned all the different important cards and other items and then combined them on certain pages. As you see below I had a card I saved from my brother that meant a lot to me enough to keep it. So I put it in the book but then journaled about it so that I'll never forget all the amazing cards he would always send. Then on the next page I saved some hair that I chopped off and seriously it looks amazing scanned!

My mom saved everything us kids made! I won't comment if that's bad or good. However, I am happy she did save certain items. Below are some random drawings she saved of when I used to doodle at church. To be honest if my kids came home with these drawings on a church program I would for sure throw them away, but looking at them now it brings back so many memories! So I scanned them in my book and journaled the memories I have so I can always remember.

Here I just scanned various awards I received and downsized some to make them fit on a page so I didn't have a million pages of award after award which would be pretty boring to look at. (That sounded conceited but it's not. Elementary schools just give so many awards! However I was a star pupil in those early grades;))

I scanned in this story I wrote that was 8x10 and just downsized them to fit on one 8x10 page.

And more awards and report cards I downsized to fit onto one page

I just did a compilation of some random drawings when I was little.

Of course a couple month's later I procrastinated again with another Groupon and on the last day scrambled of what to use it on. So I decided to do the same thing but with my little brother's scrapbook I had made him for a project at church when I was 17. It's all of my little brother but I wanted a copy because it shows all the hard work, time and creativity I put into it. Plus, for some reason I had to have a theme for every page, so it's funny to see what I came up with.:)

Now this page was cutting pictures to the extreme! My sister's love to laugh at this one.

Overall I love, love, loved how they turned out!

Now I can pack away those bulky scrapbooks and have a nice and neat hardcover book on my bookshelf that is easier to look at!

Plus I always have those digital copies safe and secure in case of an accident!