Barbados bits and bobs

April 9th 2013

I totally lied when I said I was done with Barbados posts. Sorry. At least it’s a bit warmer in the UK now, so looking over holiday snaps doesn’t feel so painful. I knocked together the video above from the clips I took on my camera. The speeded-up timelapse sunsets are my favourite part!

Barbados: Trip-35

I semi-forgot that I took a film camera along too – my trusty Olympus Trip-35 – so just got around to getting the photos developed.

Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35
Barbados: Trip-35

Finally, Blurb offered me a chance to try their custom book printing service again (here’s my first book), so I had a fun evening with their BookSmart software creating a holiday album of my favourite digital snaps.

Barbados Blurb

I went for full-on luxury this time: a large format landscape book with image-wrapped cover. It looks stunning – a true coffee table tome – and the inside pages are so vibrant, they really do colourful Barbados justice.

P4100311
P4100312
P4100314

Their Booksmart software is a great tool to use if you want more control over the layout of your book. It takes a bit of getting used to and can be a little slow and crashy – but bearing in mind it’s dealing with 800mb of images I can forgive that, and it saves automatically so you never lose anything. But it was easy to reorder and add pages and to make sumptuous full-bleed double-page image spreads. You can also create custom collage templates to add several photos per page (or use the premade ones), and add text captions in a large choice of fonts.

I’m super pleased with how my book turned out – it will be living in pride of place on the coffee table next to my Bajan pottery and foraged fossilised rocks. My family all want a copy too, so I think I’ll be ordering a few more smaller format versions. For £15 off your first order, just click here to get started, entering code FRIEND at the checkout.

Blurb gave me a voucher to review their service, and the referral link is an affiliate link

Comments (5)

  • Michelle

    April 9th 2013 at 10:28 pm

    Great video – felt like a mini holiday to the Islands.

  • Michelle

    April 10th 2013 at 10:13 am

    The video is amazing! Looks like such a lovely and relaxing place.

    Thanks for the Blurb discount code! I selected one of the cheaper soft cover options to test it out and it’s only cost me just over £5. Bargain!

  • Louise

    April 11th 2013 at 6:28 am

    Hey Katie, Love your blurb book! I’ve been trying to get around to making a few of these from my travels but am just so awful at cutting down on my photo choices! I spent a month in Nepal and currently have a book of about 450 pages! Eeek! Any tips for photo selection?

    1. Katie

      April 11th 2013 at 9:58 am

      I feel your pain – I had over 1,000 photos from just ten days in Barbados!

      I tried to tell a story of each day over one double-page spread only. I did break that a little bit (like with the turtles and wildlife), and together with the full-bleed image pages my book’s about 30 spreads in total.

  • Helen Wells

    April 11th 2013 at 10:01 am

    Dear Katie

    I’ve just found your beautiful website and blog about Blurb books. You have inspired me. Thank you so much for sharing the discount code.
    Happy days.

    Helen xx

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