Review of Creative Memories new 11x14 PicFolios Album About This Page:

[maggieworkman]

I purchased one of Creative Memories relatively new album - PicFolios 11x14 Milestones album. It is black leather and has these slip in sleeves for your pictures instead of blank pages where you stick your pictures down on them. It has room for 160 pictures or journal boxes.

I bought it for my mom to give her on Mother's Day. I filled it with pictures from our cruise last summer. I had originally bought her a little brag book type album on the ship, but we had too many pictures to fit in there!

So, I really liked this album for this particular purpose. I was able to quickly complete the album and give as a gift. I took one of the picture slots on each page and made a journal box where I typed up a paragraph about those pictures. I then embellished that journal box with a few cruise type stickers. Not much embellishments. So it may not be for those of you who like to do more "art" then pictures type albums. But it is nice if you want to get your pictures in a photo safe album with a little decoration. The album was just big enough to fit all of our cruise pictures (most of them, at least) and I was able to fit in all the "topics" I wanted.

The only issue is that there are 3 landscape and 2 vertical slots on each page. So I had to be creative to get everything to fit properly. I did learn that on the Walgreens.com site, you can upload your pictures and then change the orientation of the crop from landscape to vertical (you lose a little of the picture, so only works on certain pictures). Then you can have them printed and picked up at Walgreens within an hour!

Creative memories also sells a smaller brag type album with the same picture slots in a 6x7 size.

I would recommend this album if you want a quickly completed album or if you do not want lots of embellishments. I think this would be good for someone like my mom who wants to go a step above just sticking the pictures in a magnetic album (the horror!!!) but doesn't want to do a full blown scrapbook.

Here is a link:

http://www.creativememories.com/MainMenu...bum-Black-11x14

Maggie

[graygables]

I think it's interesting how the circle has come around...those used to be a very popular way to have a photo album several years ago, but the frustration was the horizontal/landscape thing which is why the scrapbook as we know it now took off in the first place. I'm glad they are making an elegant option for people who just aren't into "traditional" scrapbooking.

[wdwlovers]

I saw this book and was pretty excited to see it. WHile I probably won't get one, it's perfect for my MIL. My aunt did purchase one to use as her cruise book, and ran into the same problem you did with the vertical/horizontal shots. She also ran short by about 5 pages, so she's got to get creative with paring down to get the other photos in.

Thanks for your input Maggie!

[Marv]

Interesting idea. It would be nice for me when I go with my Mom and make her a book that I want to get done quickly and without as many embellishments. Do you like the 11 X 14 size of the the album? 14" seems big, those darn 12 X 12's weigh a ton when you get bazillion pages in them! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[maggieworkman]

Michelle,
You may not know, but my family albums are all the 11x14 size! When I first started scrapbooking, my Creative Memories consultant encouraged all of her clients to use the 11x14 size. You can get 40% more pictures in the album but the price of the album is about the same as the 12x12.

That was, until last year when they announced they were discontinuing the 11x14 size. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] So, I went and bought a 12x12 for my 2005 album that I am currently working on. Well, lo and behold they decided NOT to discontinue the big albums. Oh well.

I did kind of like the new PicFolio book for this purpose. I mean, my mom's cruise album is done and mine is only 1/2 way done!

Maggie

[Marv]

I never realized your books were that size. That's pretty funny of me. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]