Posted By FarmerJ on January 21, 2010

I stumbled upon an offer just a few hours before its deadline December 31, 2009.  It sounded like an offer that was too good to be true, so I thought I’d give it a try before I spread the word about it.  Well, the offer stands true!  Check it out!

HotPrints Photo Books are a great way to share your digital photographs with family and friends.  The books are 16 pages printed on high quality Hewett Packard paper.  I must say, I was impressed with the quality.  And, what impressed me even more was the offer!

Right now, you can sign up to receive one free HotPrints photo book per month ~ even the shipping and handling is free.  How can you pass that up?!  The fees are being paid by sponsors, so there is a removable  insert page included in the book.  No worries, it does not effect the pages containing your photos whatsoever.  The back cover contains some printing like the logo, name and address, but it’s certainly not unsightly.  If it really bothers someone, they could get creative and give that page a little ‘makeover.’  Honestly, though, it really doesn’t look bad the way it is.

Since I was under such a short deadline to submit my December photo book, I didn’t have a lot of time to explore the features and options of the software.  I just quickly chose a scrapbook format that wasn’t too ‘girlie’ and uploaded a bunch of photos I had saved on my computer of  Darling Husbie’s deployment in Taji, Iraq.  I clicked on the ‘Auto Fill’ button and that was it.  I was going to have this scrapbook be a little surprise for him, but he ended up walking in on me while I was uploading the photos.  In his typical, adorable inquisitive way, he just had to see what I was so secretively up to.  While the timing of my surprise didn’t go as I had planned, he was tickled about what I was doing and we were both anxious for the book to arrive.

Anyway!  Since then, I’ve learned that you can really manipulate the pages of the book.  You can choose to have all the pages contain the same background, or you can have a different background on every page if you so desire.  There are different page layouts to choose from, so some pages can have one or two photos on it while others have five or six photos on it.  You can add captions to the photos, if you wish.  There are little embellishments you can add, like borders and the old fashion picture tabs that held the photos in place, even.  It’s actually really neat ~ and it’s free!  Oh, and once you save your photo book, you have the option to download a .pdf of your book!

Our Taji, Iraq scrapbook arrived yesterday, so the process took about three weeks from the time I submitted the photos.  As I said, I am impressed with the quality, and I am quite excited to get my January photo book assembled and ordered now!  Darling Husbie enjoyed receiving it, too, I think.  He sat for awhile looking through it last night ~ I could tell the photos were bringing back memories of his deployment experience…which is exactly what a scrapbook is supposed to do.  He carted it off to work with him this morning.  I just know he’s placed it somewhere where it can become a conversation piece and allow him the opportunity to share his experiences with others.  [My mission is accomplished!]

If, throughout the year, there happens to be a month when I don’t have a photo book to submit, I think I will redo the Taji book.  I’d like to make it more personable and add more captions now that I’ve learned how to use those features.  I don’t know, though!  I can think of photo book projects for at least the next three months…

Let us know if you end up taking advantage of this neat opportunity!

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