Mixbook Photobook Review

This is actually the cover.

Scrapbooking is a huge hobby of mine (among so many others).  However, that was before kids because let’s face it I just don’t have the time I used to have.  As a matter of fact a couple months ago my husband and I were doing a cleaning out day and several totes of scrapbooking went out to the storage shed.  I just can’t have all that taking up space in my house right now when I know that I am not going to get to it.  So for now I will label my pictures well and rely on companies like Mixbook.

What does Mixbook offer?  Well I love the feel of a scrapbooked album but since I don’t have time I can rely on Mixbook to put together a wonderfully cute album for me with the pictures I have chosen.  For the instance of review I choose to do a year in review for Coulter and Corbin.  Now I have purchased a couple of books before from other companies and haven’t been overlay impressed.  I didn’t think they offered real design choices and upon delivery the covers were bent from poor packaging.  Also the pictures seemed fuzzy.  So while I was ready to give Mixbook a chance I didn’t have high expectations.  I was surprised early into the process.  I was offered several design choices from the beginning and didn’t stop with just the pages between the cover.  My front cover starts off with an actual picture of my boys.  I can’t remember how I had the title centered so I am unsure if it “out of the circle” because of me or the company so that is something I would pay a little more attention to next time.  I changed the sizing of my font and that may have affected how it was centered.

Now back to that time issue and the fact that I don’t seem to have a lot of it lying around…that means that I need to have the site auto shuffle my pictures into place and I have the ability to re-arrange them later.  Mixbook offers this option which is wonderful.  Mixbook will also warn you when you photo upload will be distorted because of low resolution or pixels (uploading from facebook can cause this problem).  This is a nice feature, but I ran into problems because I used the tool available to upload from facebook, well this caused many of my pictures to not have the best resolution (facebook re-sizes pictures on their own site and then they uploaded funky on Mixbook) for this book which is nice to know ahead of time but when I tried to replace the photo, it meant I had to delete the photo that was there.  When you delete an existing photo it deleted the whole photo box so when I replaced the photo I had to try to re size or re tilt the photo into the original position so that it would match the photos already on the page.  For a few of the photos this was tough and I wish that deleting the photo would have left the empty box with an option from there to delete the box or add another photo in it’s place. 

I did love the ease of their website and how I was actually able to have my book designed in fifteen minutes.  The process was very simple and I am so impressed with my front cover.  Shipping was great and as I have said before can take time getting to my rural area.  I was surprised when my book had arrived in less than a week (I had bare bones shipping).  The quality of the pages is excellent and compared to the other photobooks I have ordered, the Mixbook quality is leaps above the others.  I was happy to see that no quality had been lost in the photos or printing process.  Mixbook promises to make any problems right if you are un-happy with your product and offers a volume discount.  In my family we have a family reunion every year and try to keep a scrapbook record to view in later years.  With a volume discount I am sure that many members of my family would purchase one (especially because they don’t have to put it together).

Not in the market for a photobook that is available in various sizes for great prices?  Mixbook offers calendars and cards as well.  

With Corbin’s 1st birthday coming up I know that I will have a pile of pictures taken and will be on the search from a place to have them scrapbooked.  I am happy to say that my search has ended before it has even started, Mixbook offers a quality product at a great price (that saves me time and headache)!

To stay up to date with what is going on at Mixbook follow them on Facebook, Twitter or by e-mail.  E-mail subscribers will often receive discount codes.