Turning Instagram Into A REAL Book

Jul 29, 2016

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My childhood was captured on a film camera by my dad and until recently lived on slides. For my 40th birthday, my dad sorted through hundreds, if not thousands, of slides to create the most tear jerking gift of my life. Something Instagram could never do since it’s and app and not a real book.

He created a photo album spanning the time from my parent’s wedding to my very own wedding day. It is a priceless gift. (In fact, if you look on the bottom shelf in the above picture, it’s that blue photo album.)

Photography Changed

And then when I entered the world of photography, scrap-booking was HOT!!! There was an invitation nearly every week to attend a Stampin’ up party or Creative Memories gathering, where you would bring all of your print photos and creatively display them in paper books. These albums had this special acid free paper to protect your photos from aging rapidly. {I think.}

Then the DSLR camera entered the picture. (Pun intended.) I named mine Willow. She helped me launch this blog. Digital photography stormed the world and the amount of photos we could take — increased. It didn’t cost money to take a photo. The only limitation was your storage. The housing of photos changed. Your husband no longer saw all of the photos you took because they were stored in some obscure and illogical location on your computer’s hard drive — or was it the external hard drive?

But wait — you got a new phone and your fancy camera began to collect dust. Instead of capturing memories for just yourself and your immediate family, you began to take photos for Facebook and Instagram.

And that phenomenon is neat and scary all at the same time.

How I Use Instagram

My personal Instagram account largely exists for family and friends — actually for the Engineer and the grandparents. It helps us keep in touch with each other to know what we are doing during the day. I suppose you could say, “Big brother is always watching.”

However, I miss scrapbooks.

I also don’t entirely trust the digital world, since I wasn’t birthed into it.

It’s fun to enjoy snugging on the couch looking at old photos and sharing family history with a good photo book.

Looking at the screen of your phone simply isn’t natural and it is very distracting.

How I Make Instagram Non-Technical

So I ordered Chatbooks this month due to a VERY LARGE SALE they are having.

Like I had my ENTIRE Instagram account turned into several photo books because they were having a 20% off sale that happens 2 times a year.

They arrived yesterday, and my kids are giggling over the photos of themselves from 2013 — a lot can happen in 3 years.

Yes, my Chatbooks could get burned in a fire and thankfully I have digital backups. But I’d like to continue to be a family where my kids don’t have a device attached to them, except on long, long, long car rides.