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Turn Your Holiday Photo Album Into A Custom Photo Book
Samy’s Camera and StoryTeller® Photo Book Kit by Epson makes gift-giving fun and easy
Photo Albums and Scrapbooks are excellent holiday gift ideas, but presenting someone with a personalized story, bound in a hardcover book, complete with the details of an adventure illustrated with your own photographs takes gift giving over the top this year. Samy’s Camera and Epson’s StoryTeller® want 100 people to have a chance to create custom photo books, for free.

Every person signing up for Samy’s Camera newsletter at www.samys-camera.com will be entered into a drawing for a free StoryTeller® Photo Book kit that has everything you need – quality Epson Photo Paper designed to fit the pre-bound book pages, self-binding hard-back book with custom-fit transparent sleeve to protect your finished book, and the Epson StoryTeller® Publisher Software – to create your own photo book in time for holiday gift-giving.

“Family photo albums, scrap books and the like are very popular ways to capture the memories for friends and family,” says Michelle Ryther, spokesperson for Samy’s Camera. “Though each are excellent in their own right, we all know that the amount of time required to assemble them is a luxury most of us just don’t have. And as often happens, some people procrastinate so long over it that by the time they get around to working on the project, valuable dates and descriptions are long forgotten, and so the albums just don’t have the impact that a Photo Book, like Epson’s StoryTeller®, has.”

Creative Expert and San Diego School Teacher Lynn Van Gorp has been creating photo memories to share as gifts for years. “This is something I like to do, but didn’t want to spend a lot of time putting it together. The first one I made was from scratch,” says Van Gorp. “I would get covers made by a local copy & print shop in vinyl, or embossed, or I would use an existing album, but usually it had to be bound with those plastic coils. StoryTeller® is just so much easier.”

Any event in life that has a memory attached and photos to share is an excellent project for aStoryTeller®, Van Gorp shares a few ideas:

Birthdays: Use family photos centered on the guest of honor of an upcoming party for a photo book to hand out to all the guests. Then after the party, create a special version just for the guest of honor with birthday wishes captioned under each photo of her party guests. “For my mother’s birthday party, we printed copies of our Photo Book and presented them to a number of our family attending the party,” says Van Gorp. “For my mother, we created a special copy just for her. It is something she loves showing her visiting friends and provides a means of her interacting with others.”

School Days: As a teacher, Van Gorp has many opportunities to create fun projects for her students to do as a group. “It’s a great way to get the room mothers involved. This year, we are working on a book from the students to give to our coach.”

Family Vacations: Photo books are a great way to make a memory with children by having them help you put together photos of a shared family vacation. “My niece and her children were visiting from Canada and at the end of the visit, the children and I put one together. You don’t have to be an expert graphic artist or photographer. The program was so easy for the kids to use and it’s very portable – something she was able to take with her on the plane. When my niece arrived home, she no longer had to bother with organizing the photos. She already had her memories in her photo book.”

Van Gorp has also created these portable memories for weddings, anniversaries, holidays and even just everyday memories.

“It’s an immediate response, especially from kids when they can put their own thoughts about the photographs and the memories directly on the page,” says Van Gorp. “I have so many photo albums from over the years. I’m very anxious to transfer them over to a StoryTeller® photo book because they are so much more convenient and easy to use.”

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