Should You Buy a Premade Scrapbook Album?

Scrapbooking has become the thing to do with your photos. It is very trendy and doesn't seem to be going out of style any time soon. I love scrapbooking, but there are some things that I wish I'd known before I got started - such as premade books versus making your own. I used a premade book for pictures up until I was a year old and then I switched to making my own books for the years following that.

Now that you've finally decided to take the plunge and scrapbook your photos, you have some decisions to make. You've even looked into everything that you'll need to get started. And then you see them - premade scrapbooks. They range in cost from fairly cheap for manufactured ones to outrageously priced for handmade ones. Let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of premade scrapbook albums.

Advantages of Premade Albums

Saves times. It can take a few hours to make a two page layout for a scrapbook album. And that's only two pages. Imagine how long it would take to make enough pages for a whole album. Some people just don't have that kind of time to invest in making their own album.

Saves money. Scrapbooking requires paper, scissors, embellishments, etc. A person can easily spend a lot of money buying all of the necessary supplies to make their own scrapbook pages. But if you have a premade album, the only necessary supply is a photo safe glue-stick.

Doesn't require creativity. Some people are a bit challenged when it comes to anything requiring use of their imagination. With a premade album, all someone has to do is glue down their own pictures on the pages.

Disadvantages of Premade Albums

Limited design. Not getting to design the pages yourself can mean that your photos don't always fit in with the page design. While you may not mind the theme being a bit off, this isn't the only problem. The predesigned photo frames and mats on the pages may not be turned the right way for the angle your photos were taken at. This isn't always a problem, though, since having the pictures turned off center can add a little flare. However, you don't want the majority of your pictures to be that way because then it's obvious that the pages weren't made for the photos.

Album cover. There are fewer choices for the album cover design with premade books than there are if you buy a blank album. Some of them are nice, but I love the covers on the albums that I bought and then made the pages myself. If you want to pick out your own album, you could buy only the premade pages. However, buying the pages individually is a lot more expensive.