Blog Book for 2024

 I got my 2024 blog print book the other day, and I have mixed feelings about it. I've been using Blog2Print to print my yearly blogs for several years, and have been okay with my books, which are records of my creative stuff for the year. But Blog2Print closed in 2024,  so I decided to try letting PixxieBook print my blog posts for last year.

First, let me say that I was able to preview the finished book before I ordered it, and I okayed it, but didn't really realize the reality of it, I guess. I don't hate it, and there is a lot I like about it. It's just different to what I'm used to.

It's a lot bigger, thicker, and heavier than I thought it would be. I like my pictures to be in the order that I created the projects in with the writing under each picture, but the pictures are all out of order and the writing is in columns and not on the same page as the pictures. Some pictures take up a whole page and other pages have multiple pictures in multiple sizes. I do like the bigger pictures, but that made it take more pages, thus making the book more expensive than my old printer. The process for making the book is very easy, but I had no control over hard or soft covers, text, or picture size. There is also no table of contents.

It's more like a coffee table book than a thinner shelf book, and it looks very nice, but is going to take up way more space on my shelf. 

Some of the pages inside the PixxiBook...

Comparison of  PixxiBook (bottom) and Blog2Print (top). They both contain a year's worth of blog posts, however, with Blog2Print I could pick hard or soft cover, text size and font,  picture size, and also the cover picture. It also has a table of contents and page numbers to make certain posts easy to find.

The pictures are all the same size (which I chose), but the text is under each picture, and they are in the order I created and posted them on my blog in. They did run some paragraphs together, and I did get to preview the book as it would be printed and okayed it. 

I am ok with neither book being exactly like I would have liked it to be, because they are only for me, as a record of my creative efforts each year. I don't sell, or gift, them to anyone. I did use to gift my mom one each year, but she passed away in 2017, so now I just publish one. 

Blogspot is not set up to where I can print them off myself, but that would also be very expensive, considering the price of ink cartridges.

These are a few pages from the Blog2Print book with soft covers and smaller pictures, which made it cheaper also.

I wasn't sure I was even going to start posting to my blog this year, or not, and the jury is still out as to whether I will keep it up, or not. Mine and hubby's health are both declining, and it's very hard right now to stay focused on keeping up a blog that I'm not even sure anybody is looking at anymore. I'm not sure it even matters if I keep records of my creative stuff. I know I'm not really good at any of it. I just really enjoy the doing of it!

If I do continue, I will do further research into blog printers for this year's posts. PixxiBook did a good job, but I preferred the Blog2Print format, mainly because I post what I used, how I did it, where and who I learned it from, etc., under each picture and that's where they printed it.

UPDATE: When I took the time to really look at and read the Pixxibook it started growing on me, and I am liking it much better, despite the differences!

Pixxibook is great if you want a coffee table book! Great quality!

Anyway, I'm not good at reviewing things, and, as I said, there are things I love and things I don't love as much in both versions, but they suit my needs, so there's that.

Keep playing and creating bright things during this cold winter. Spring will be here before we know it!