12 x 12 Scrapbook Printing

Just got an email from the person who scans my pages for me - she had emailed me to see if I was happy with everything and I asked her if there had ever been a delivery time.

She said she has been in business doing this since 2004 and 100% of the albums have made it safely both ways. Not one lost in the entire 10 years

But, nobody just drops them in the mail. We love our pages of course, and everyone who sends them is careful to have them boxed properly and sent through a reliable service.

I made paper and scissors layouts I wanted scanned.

Then I loaded the scans into Shutterfly so I could have book printed of my scrapbooks.

I live in Ocala which is rather small so I've had a real struggle finding someone to scan things locally - no one has a scanner big enough so I had to mail them away.

For anyone else who cannot get them done locally I highly recommend the person who did mine although it is scary to mail them off. I'm kind of restless while they are en route for delivery.

I admit I did not read ALL of what you wrote henri jean but are you digitally making 12x12 layouts then wanting to scan and print right ??? or what exactly are you doing sorry for not reading it all but I have a short attn. span at times
thanks

Your welcome. I think you live around Seattle don't you? If so you will probably have places that will be able to do it. Just not possible in places like Ocala places. I just learned the hard and expensive way to ask if the printer bed is actually a 12 x 12. None of them in Ocala are (except for the blueprint company which wants $10.00 a page).

I was told the 11 1/2 width would work because it would shrink it a bit and it didn't work at all. I lost even more trying to square it after I got the scan back.

I actually considered buying a 12 x 12 scanner - a good flatbed one is about $3,000. Couldn't find a good one any cheaper - they are nearly all under 12" wide (on some you have to read the fine print) even though they claim to be 12".

I could have done all of mine and saved a lot of money and then done them for other scrapbookers to pay for the machine.

Actually people ask all the time how to make money scrapbooking or at home and that would be a way. How much you made would depend on how much you put the word out on the internet and other places. Scrapbook stores and even bulletin boards and places like Michaels and Hobby Lobby would bring in business.

If I were going to be home all the time I would probably do that.

Thanks for sharing this Henri.

I was not going to mail mine - no way, no how. Then the more I researched it, the more I was realized it was the only way I was going to get the quality scans I wanted was to mail them out.

First I went to Office Depot, Sam's Club, Costco and Staples and got the same answer from all of them. They send them out, and not locally! It would take several days before they got where they would be scanned, then they would send them back to the store for me to pick up. That just wasn't going to work for me since they didn't do them in any of our local stores.

They all said that the company does have some scanner beds large enough but they are in stores in larger cities and even then you won't find them at all locations. So even in a large city your layouts may be sent to another store in the area.

However, from Ocala - none of the locations of any of those places could do them in store and I didn't want them sent out to other stores in another city or state.

Next option was the UPS store. I took one page to UPS to "test" them and they passed. It was only one page so they stopped and did it while I waited. However I didn't realize that the scanner bed was a tad too short on one side because my layout has a lot of border around it. Had the work gone closer to the edge I would have noticed. But I didn't notice the border was not even on both sides and was excited to find a local place that would do them for a reasonable price. (Later I found out that the scanner beds are not 12 x 12 in any of the UPS stores, they are short on one side - same as my Office Depot, SAMS, Costco and Staples. I think they are 11 1/2 x 17. They may be some exceptions in bigger cities.)

After being happy with the first one done by UPS I took them 30 layouts to scan and was told they would be ready in 3 days. I went back in 3 days - they wanted 3 more days. It took 4 weeks for them to scan them! They finally told me they could only work on them when the store was empty - could not do scrapbook pages when there were customers.

Even thought it took them 4 weeks to scan 30 layouts I decided to give them my next batch of 30 anyway. I picked up my flash drive with the first 30 scans and gave UPS store another group of 30 pages to scan.

Then when I got home I made a Shutterfly book using the first 30 scans from UPS while they were scanning the 2nd batch.

The Shutterfly book came back a couple weeks later (UPS hadn't even started scanning my second batch yet) and the Shutterfly book was awful. UPS had cut off edges and even though they used a 600 dpi they were fuzzy and not done well.

I went to UPS and got my second book back - it had been almost 3 weeks now and they hadn't started scanning them yet! And I wasn't going to let them, they did such a bad job on the first batch.

Then I realized if I wanted the quality scans that would do print quality work and not cut off edges, I would have to mail them. No other way. The only place I found in Ocala that would do them in house and had a scanner bed that would do a 12 x 12 without cutting any of the page off wanted to charge $10.00 a page!

Then I found the company I used and decided to try and send just 30 pages to her. I was so nervous about mailing them.

The UPS store did a fabulous job of boxing them up and I did an overnight UPS delivery - the scrapbook scanning company got them the next day and called to tell me they had them.

Then coming back they were mailed the same way and I got them the next day. They weren't floating around in the mail for days with me worrying!

In fact they mailed them back late in the afternoon and I always got them back about 9:00 the next morning!

I still mailed them in smaller groups - not everything at once and everything came back perfect.

The best part is that the person who runs the company is a scrapbooker and cared about my pages. Some embellies fell off and she emailed me and asked if I wanted it repaired (she didn't charge for that) but she put a lot of letters back on that weren't held well with the zig pen.

I had also sent her the pages I had already had done by UPS to get them done over but nicely. And after that I reprinted the Shutterfly book using the scans that Lisa did and it came out 100 times better than the book using the scans from UPS. They weren't fuzzy and the edges weren't cut off on the scans.

The big difference was that the girl I sent them to understands and she really is interested in the craft and works hard on each page to make sure it is perfect.

I still don't like mailing my layouts but since I live in a smallish city and the big stores do not have scanner beds large enough to scan 12 x 12 without cutting 1/2" off the side (then when you "square" it you loose another 1/2" off the top or bottom!) my only option is to mail it.

If you find a place that does scans of blueprints (those are large and require a large scanner bed) they would be able to do 12 x 12's. Maybe Kinko's would have a large scanner (I would think so but I'm guessing) and they are usually pretty fast and reasonably priced.

You may be fortunate and have a Staples, Costco, Sam's, or Office Depot that has one of the scanner beds that will do a 12 x 12. But if they tell you they can reduce it slightly and make the copy on an 11 1/2 wide bed - they can't. It didn't work. And be sure to ask if it is done in the store or sent to another location!

I would go with what henri jean said but you could always try m pix
good luck!!! One day I need to stop creating and begin preserving also one day haha

I looked at the site mentioned above. It looks like a great idea, but I agree with you. I don't like the idea of mailing out my work either. I'm going to look into Costco and UPS after the holidays. I need to invest in a decent lock box so I can keep a digital copy safe.

I take a photo of my layouts and have had many printed at Costco. I take them in a high jpg. You might consider that. I can not fathom mailing my books somewhere for scanning/printing.

Thanks for the info.

Your welcome - let me know how it works out! I am a very pleased customer!

Good to know! Think I'll call next week & see what they can do. Thanks for the information!

I don't have them print my pages, although they do.

After Lise sends me the flash drive back I have them printed by Shutterfly into books and they do great!

Okay - looking at their site un FAQS - Paper Options:

Matte Regular 100lb text paper that is acid and lignin-free

Gloss Regular - 100 text paper - acid and lignin free

Matte Cardstock - 100lb cover paper acid and lignin free

Gloss Cardstock - 100lb cover paper that is acid and lignin free

So all 4 paper choices they offer are acid and lignin free.

The founder is a former Creative Memories scrapbooker.

There were Disney pages in my books and it was fine. She's a scrapbooker. She knows what we scrap. She knows we aren't printing pages for sale or distribution.

If the entire book is Disney you might want to ask her on the phone but I doubt she will have a problem with it.

I was thinking about getting scans of some Disney scrapbook pages i designed and painted, so that i could use the scans (prints?) for photos and save the originals for a master copy, but I'm so afraid, A) Kinko's will have a fit over copyright issues, and B) the copies will use paper with acid in it. Do you guys know if this would be a problem for scrapbooks to share?

I've heard great things about Persnickety Prints too, although I've not used them myself.

I just had every one of my pages (about 1,800) scanned and am thrilled with the results. The girl that runs the place is awesome. You usually have to call and leave a message and I usually get a call back in minutes.

She charges $1.00 a page for scanning but her work is very high quality and she is reliable. I didn't have her print but I think that is $1.50 a page but since I didn't have her print for me I'm not 100% sure if that is just print or scan and print with you getting a copy of the scan.

I was concerned about them getting lost in the mail and she told me that she had never had that happen.

I'm going to post her website address here because I don't think she does anything that is a conflict with scrapbook.com - she doesn't sell supplies or anything.

You have a choice of copies, scanning or both. If you scan (but don't print) like I did she will charge you for a disk and it was a bit high to me. The option I chose was to put a flash drive in with the photos and I got it back when she mailed my pages back to me.

The UPS store does a phoneomnal job boxing up the layouts safely.

The quality of the work Lisa did was perfect - just had to download them into Snapfish and I have beautiful scrapbook copies.

The company name is Scrapbooks To Share and Lisa's phone number is (561) 926--4476. Her website is sbtoshare.com - I highly recommend her.

Can anyone recommend a good place to have my 12 x 12 pages scanned and/or reprinted? I don't have enough supplies to remake the pages by hand and I want copies for both my kids.

Thanks :-)