How to Make a Scrapbook for Man in Your Life

Want to make a special gift for a man in your life? That can be Dad, Grandpa, your husband or your boyfriend. Whether your guy likes candy or not, you might want to get something more special for him as a gift for:

• Valentine's Day
• Birthday
• Father's Day
• Anniversary
• Christmas

A Photo scrapbook is a gift that lasts well past the holiday. A photo scrapbook can be a terrific way to go beyond just giving a gift or card. In a photo book, you can use pictures and words to explain why a dad is so special to you, or why being in the arms of your guy is the best place in the world.

1. Organize by Events. Since we often take photos of events and store them that way too, the easiest way to organize your book is in the order things happened. You can make books with themes like "Our First Year" with pictures of things you've done that year, or make book about all of the events of the past year.
2. Organize by Hobby. Celebrate what you guy loves to do by choosing pictures of him doing his favorite hobby like golfing, basketball, cooking, or hunting.
3. Organize by Relationship: Show appreciation for a guy by pointing out his relationship to other people. One idea is pictures of dad with his kids as they grow up. Or maybe you want to choose pictures of Grandpa with his first grandchild. Another idea is choosing pictures which tell “How my Father has Influenced Me” or “Why We Love Dad” or “Funny Stories about Dad.” For your husband, you may want to have the kids tell about their dad or else talk about, “Why I appreciate you.” Siblings might enjoy a book about "Brother knows best" or "What guys when the girls aren't around."
4. Organize by Photos: Sometimes you can make a book faster if you make the story out of the photos rather than the other way around. Get some great photos. Don’t forget you can download photos from Facebook pages! Remember that you don't always have to use photos of people. You might want to take photos of "Things My Guy Loves" or for a Dad you can use photos of the kids. You can also scan in older print photos or use the macro setting on your camera to take a digital picture.
5. Organize by places, things or people. Actually, many guys don't necessarily want a scrapbook full of photos of them. They might rather have photos of you, or special places or things they love. One easy idea is "Our Favorite Places" with pictures of you and your guy.
6. Organize by Theme. If you start with a topic like, "Why I Love You" or “How dad has helped me” or “Top Ten things Dad Says,” you can easily write your book by just showing a single picture and writing a caption fitting that theme.
7. Organize by stories: If you have time, and you are doing a photo book from several people, you can put a picture of that person and then have them say why they love and appreciate Dad, Grandpa or Uncle Mike. Another idea is asking other people for a sentence or a story that fits your theme. Being able to honor your dad by telling stories or giving words from other people will make the gift more meaningful. Including the words of children can be especially fun and sometimes hilarious! By writing your story first, you will find the whole process of making your photo book goes faster.

In a Romantic Scrapbook, you can make this all about your relationship with your guy. Those sorts of books are easy. Here are 10 Romance Scrapbook ideas:

1. Top Ten Places I want to be with You
2. Top Ten Songs We Love
3. How you Make Me Feel
4. Why I love You
5. Our Favorite Places
6. Our Special Memories
7. Crazy things we've done
8. Special Dates
9. Vacations we've taken together
10. Dreams we have

Consider putting together a series of pictures of you together, or pictures of things you love to do. You might make a book of a trip you took, or places you like to visit.

The video tells how one woman made a Wedding photo book in just 15 minutes. You can easily make a Photo book in just a short period of time. So it is a great last minute gift, which seems like it took hours! Using the Custom Path tool at Shutterfly can make it that easy.

You can even make books ahead of time, save them on the site or even share them for free, then wait until you get a coupon to get them printed. Because I'm never too good at planning ahead, I often will make a photo gift and share it with my husband through email or by looking at it together on our home entertainment system. Then I wait until I get a coupon and print it out. That way the gift is given on time, and I don't have to worry about being late--but I can still make sure I get a good deal when I purchase it!

1. Choose a theme for your book.
2. Find pictures to go with your theme (or choose your pictures first and then think of a theme that fits the pictures you have).
3. Organize your photos to go with the story. You can use photos that illustrate the ideas you wrote down or else pictures of the people who said comments. However, don’t worry if your photos don’t exactly match the story you want to tell. Just include photos that you know dad will love to look at, whether that is photos of kids, pets, sporting events, family or himself.
4. Upload your pictures into one of the photo book websites. See the tutorial in the video at the left for how to do this. If you haven’t used these sites before, you may need to download their photo up-loader and sign on to use them. This process just takes a few minutes and afterwards, you will be able to easily use the site for making other gifts. There are many different photo book sites, but three of the best are Smilebox, Winkflash Snapfish or Shutterfly. See my hub which describes the differences, pros and cons of these three programs.
5. Use the website tools to start making a photo book. You will have a lot of themes to choose from. There may even be a pre-made style that fits your theme idea
6. Choose a theme or color that dad likes. Your book will look more professional if you have a unified color scheme. All of the photo book printers make that easy since they have pages and themes all set up for you. Smilebox, Winkflash and Shutterfly all offer multiple ways to put a photo scrapbook together with almost any color or theme.
7. Create your book by putting the photos in the pages and adding your text (from the notes you wrote down or gathered from other people). You should know that while Smilebox often has limited spaces for words, both Winkflash and Shutterfly offer you many options of when you can put in a half page or more of text. Don’t worry if you want to use Smilebox but also want to add some stories. If you use Smilebox for designing some of your pages, you can also put in some of the text or photo templates that are already in Shutterfly or Winkflash.
8. Should You Auto-fill the book?: Some of the sites will auto-fill your pictures into the book. This is very fast, but you may find that the photos don't go in the order you wanted them to be placed, or important photos are too small. You might want to try this option. You can move some of the photos around after it is auto-filled.
9. Email or Print your Book. You can share your gift in many ways. You can certainly print out a copy for dad to have to look at for many years to come. A printed book can come in many sizes and range in price from $7.00 to $40, depending on whether you want to give him a small brag book or a coffee table heirloom. You can also make a CD or DVD for him on Smilebox. That way, he can have it on his desktop at work or view it on this T.V. screen at home.

I usually use Shutterfly because they offer so many free books and the printing is a very high quality. When putting this article together, I found out that many people sell their free book coupons on E-bay, so I've started buying these when I need one for a book.

Free books from Shutterfly are great deals. You will have to pay for the book being shipped to you, but usually, you end up paying around $10 for a 20 page book. That is cheaper than it would cost you to print up the photos! Plus, you get to put in all your own comments and choose backgrounds to make your photos look their best. Shutterfly also has digital stickers you can use to add titles and other decorations.

If I'm really strapped for time, I often just choose a black background and no comments. That makes a stunning photo book which looks professional--but takes almost no time! If you load up your photos when you take them, they will also store them for free for you and you can then go back when you have time to make a book. Moreover, when you join they are always giving you deals for free photos and cards. They will even print out and mail your cards for you for just the cost of a stamp. I haven't done that yet but it sounds like a great deal.

When you sign up with them, they will send you special deals by email all the time. Winkflash is not quite as good of quality but offers a flat rate book fairly often which gives you up to 100 pages for about $40. Picaboo has probably the very best quality. They don't offer as many special deals, so jump on them when you see them.

Need a gift quick and don't have much time? Don't worry. Often, photo scrapbook sites will let you show the book you make before you get the hard copy. So make your book on Smilebox, Shutterfly, Winkflash or Picaboo and then send a digital copy or show a copy (with commentary on your own memories about the pictures). Then you can give the hard copy to your guy when it arrives.

Luckily, these photo scrapbook sites keep on getting better and better and many of them can actually put the whole book together for you in just a few minutes. They can take pictures from social media sites or your phone too. Because it will be personal, he won't know you didn't spend hours ahead of time. You can email it to him or for a small fee you can make a DVD or print out a professional looking book!

Whether your guy avoids having his picture taken, or is always trying to capture the memory, you can be sure that your photo book will be a treasure to him. Photo books capture our memories and help us to keep the people we love with us. When he's had a tough day at work, your book will remind him of the people who love him and support him no matter what.

Making a photo scrapbook may take a little more time than other gifts, but it will not be thrown away. In fact, it can become a family heirloom which tells about how that man influenced your family. Or it can be the gift that lets you say in print how you really feel about the guy in your life. Even better, making the gift will help you relive those great memories. Spend the time to make a photo scrapbook for the man in your life as a Valentine's Day gift!