My sister-in-law just finished a Heritage Makers book that I am SO impressed with! She got a YEAR'S WORTH of scrapbooking done in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of traditional paper-and-scissors scrapbooking.
Price is big on everybody's mind, so let's break down the price and talk about the convenience later!
My sister-in-law made an 8.5x11-inch book. Books come with 21 pages, and an 8.5x11 book costs $60 at retail price (you can get a better price than that, but for the sake of argument, let's do the math using the retail price.) That's $2.86 per page, if you're assuming that the hardcover library binding is free! (And again, that's at retail price, which you never have to pay.) With this size book, you can fit about 6-8 pictures per page.
A traditional scrapbook page the same size would cost roughly:
- 20 cents per printed picture x 7 pictures = $1.40
- one sheet of cute scrapbooking paper = $0.59-$1.59 (though people usually use more than one sheet on a page)
- various embellishments (stickers, brads, buttons, vellum, etc.) = $0.50-$2.00 (that's pro-rated...don't forget you have to buy whole packages of these things; this also doesn't include other items such as pens and glue)
- some kind of page protector or sleeve for the page to go in = $0.15-$0.40 (depending on size & style)
- a book or binder for all the pages to go in = $12.00-$40.00
So let's estimate about $3.45-$3.90 for an average page, not including another $12-$40 for the book or binder that holds all the pages, or the glue/pens and other supplies that need to be replenished.
Now the way my sister-in-law did her book was GENIUS. She wanted to put all the pictures from the year into one book. The book came with 21 pages, but you can add extra pages (maximum 99 pages total). EXTRA PAGES ARE ONLY $1.25 EACH!!!
If she'd made a bigger 12x12 book or 13x11 book, extra pages would only be $2 each! That's less than what you'd pay to just print the pictures, with NO paper, stickers, etc.!! So she really got a DEAL on her beautiful book.
The convenience factor was big for her as well, as it is for most people. When you have scrapbooking supplies, you need a place to store them AND you need a place to spread them all out when you want to put your scrapbooks together. She just had her 4th baby, so she really appreciated the fact that her Heritage Makers book was done all online. She could work on it for 15 minutes here and there as she had time, and she didn't have to drag out boxes of supplies and materials every time she wanted to work on her book.
It was the cheapest and most convenient way I've ever seen a scrapbook done! It was gorgeous, too!
