Paper for printing

[jesshen]

Hi,

Another question for you all. What type of paper do you use in printing out your scrapbook pages? What do you all use: glossy, matte... plain paper, card stock... ?

Also: I have read in another post that someone does the 8 X 8 scrapbook size. Are 8 X 8 scrapbooks easily available? I am very interested in doing this particular size as I could then print out at home and trim off the paper. I have a good printer (Canon Pixma iP8500) but it is not a wide-format printer.

And can anybody tell me why scrapbooks are a square format? Many photo albums are not necessarily this way; so I just wonder if anybody knows the reasoning behind this, other than it's just tradition?

Thanks,

Jessica

[triciadoll]

Hello Jessica,

I do all of my layouts in 12x12 then resize to 8x8 for printing. I have tried both glossy and matte paper, but prefer the matte. You can find 8x8 albums almost everywhere...scrapbook stores, walmart, target, etc. It is really a great size!

[Wendy]

I too prefer matte ... I think that glossy just doesn't look as good


Wendy

Hi Jess,
In digital scrapbooking, the key is to preserve the pages for as long as possible. There are great products out there right now that do just that. Epson makes archival quality scrapbooking pages that will last for 100 years or so. I'm sure there are others.

As for sizes, 8x8" scrapbooks are easily available. Creative Memories offers them, and again, I'm sure many other makers offer them as well. 12x12" seems to be the standard size for scrapbooks, and as you say, it's probably just a traditional scrapbooking size. I would say that the reason for that size is because in traditional scrapbooking, there are a lot of elements on the pages, in addition to photos (for instance: greeting cards, napkins, matchbooks, theater programs or other memorabilia or tokens, plus other embellishments) so they need to be larger to accommodate all the many possible page elements.

Speaking of Epson, they offer digital scrapbooking kits that can give you a head start on designing your pages. They also make a printer that will handle 12x12" pages as well.

There are other companies that allow you to create your scrapbook pages on standard 8.5x11" paper also. And don't forget the handy service built into Photoshop Elements 3.0 under the Create category, which lets you create your own memory book, then sends the data to Kodak Easy Share Gallery, where it's printed. In a week or so, you get a beautifully published and nicely bound memory book in the mail.

Or, if you prefer, you can do the same with other services such as MyPublisher.com, SnapFish.com and ShutterFly.com.

Hope this helps!

[jesshen]

Hi, thanks for the responses! This scrapbook will be a gift so I don't want to mess up.

So it looks like matte is the way to go, then. Jan, are the archival quality scrapbooking papers a lot more expensive than regular photo paper in matte? I will look next time I am in a store like Office Depot to see what I can find.

Jessica