Scrapbooks are an age old tradition of compiling images, notes, letters and other personally important material for a nostalgic journey years later. Maintaining a scrapbook needs patience, which a lot of us lack. Cutting images and paper clippings, making doodles with watercolor, selecting cool stickers to go with—it’s simply not everyone’s cup of tea.
Scrapblog is a scrapbooking web app that allows you to design and create your own scrapbook using a simple online interface with custom backgrounds and other design elements Scrapblog lets you create a wonderful scrapbooks to preserve treasured memories.
Overview
Scrapblog, in addition to being your digital scrapbook, also lets you share and print photographs on memorabilia like cards, calenders, photobooks and more. As soon as the photo upload is complete, users can arrange them in layouts they like then print or share those pages online.
Scrapblog is a fun web app for avid scrapbookers to take their imagination and creativity to the next level. Digital scrapbooks created at Scrapblog can be shared with friends and family which is a welcome feature if your loved ones live across the globe.
Overview
Scrapblog is free to use and signup is quick and easy. You can also connect with your Facebook account to use your Facebook photos, invite friends and publish your Scrapblog activity in your wall.
Pricing
The digital version of Scrapblog is completely free to use. However, a few custom backgrounds and stickers come with a price tag. These can be bought by using the credits purchased using your credit card. At times these credits can be earned by signing up with a sponsor. Most of the companies running such promotions are reputed brands like Disney, Netflix, etc. and I didn’t come across any shady sites (but use your judgment before signing up). Credits can also be earned by taking part in surveys.
Pricing
Coming to memorabilia and photo prints, the pricing works just like other sites offering similar services. Items include hardcover & softcover books, postcards, calenders and greeting cards.
Dashboard
Immediately after signing up, we are redirected to a rather simple looking dashboard. On the top we have options to view the scrapbooks created, profile information and the like. Displayed prominently at the centre of the dashboard is a button asking us to create a scrapbook. Clicking on the button opens up the scrapbook builder in a new window.
Dashboard
Scrapbook Builder
The scrapbook builder window displays options to select a project to add your images to. If you don’t want to use existing templates to create books, calenders, etc., there’s an option for you to create it from scratch. For the purpose of this review, I chose to create a calender.
Scrapblog Options
A bunch of templates suited to your project, with the preset dimensions are displayed. Since there weren’t any free themes (or even cheaply priced ones) available for the calender, I skipped the project altogether to create a card instead.
Selecting a Theme
After selecting the theme, a preview is shown for you to better judge the selection and, if you’re satisfied, just click the purchase option to own the theme. All new accounts come with 100 free credits and if your theme costs more than that, then you’ll need to purchase more.
Theme Preview
Next, it’s time to add images from your collection. Scrapblog allows you to directly access photos from popular image sharing destinations like Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, etc.
Adding Images
You can add multiple images simultaneously from the uploader.
Uploaded Images
QuickMix
After adding the images, the app suggests that we select images that we want to be part of the QuickMix feature. The QuickMix option has exclusive backgrounds and stickers available for use in your scrapbooks and, unlike themes, these backgrounds and stickers are completely free to use.
QuickMix Selection
Editing a Scrapbook
Tools available in the scrapbook builder are intuitive and easy to use for editing images. Images and design elements are displayed on the left column and editing options in the right column. You can just add design elements, like stickers, to a page by just dragging and dropping. Image resizing and rotation can also be done from the editor itself.
Scrapbook Editor
When you think your images need a new place, in just a couple of clicks you can create more pages to fit them in. Text editing is easy and there are lot of fonts, colors and sizes to choose from.
Adding Pages
Scrapblog also allows you to embed videos from Photobucket and YouTube. Importing a video is easy; just visit the URL that contains the video, copy the URL on the right side of the page and paste it in the Import Video page. The video will be now be a part of your awesome scrapbook!
Design Elements
Final Thoughts
What works for Scrapblog is its ability to serve both the analog and digital generation alike. For those of us who like the option to have a digital footprint of our memories to share with the world, we have the online version of a scrapbook. For those who want something tangible at an arm’s length, there’s the extensive collection of memorabilia to etch moments in print.
A huge sticking point with Scrapblog is the cost of custom themes and backgrounds. While the web app is said to be free, it’s hardly the case with calenders. The themes cost as much as $10 worth of credits and considering the fact this is just a digital background and print charges are extra, it might be considered too costly to some. If you have some money to spare and are looking for a simple, yet powerful, tool to create scrapbooks, Scrapblog would be a great choice.