[emdmom]

The agency we have chosen requires a scrapbook of our family for PBMs to view. Have any of you done digital scrapbooks? I use to scrapbook all of the time before I became a foster mom. Since that time I have discovered digital scrapbooking and love it. I am just worried that it isn't personal enough or something. Also, did you include stuff about extended family? I am very close to both my family and dh's family. They are a part of our everyday lives. Any advice or insight from you veterans?

Thanks in advance!

[aclee]

We did personal scrapbooks for each of our profiles. At least the first 20-30 we made anyway. I had a lot of help. Then an agency request 12 copies of profiles, and I made a master and photo copied it in color, and just added stickers and hand written captions. It worked out really nicely. That is what we will do if we adopt domestically again. You don't have to worry about gluing and attaching the pictures, but it's still very personal with the handwriting and cute stickers

[JustCourtney]

I made ours on Shutterfly, so it was a bound book. Our agency only required three copies, so I got four so that we would have one to keep as a momento. After seeing the beating that some of the books got - getting shown multiple times, sometimes being left with emoms, bouncing around the back of cars, our SW really suggested we go the route of the bound book. Other handmade ones looked really ratty after a couple of months or fell apart. Again, since it was only 3 copies - it was worth it!

If you would like a link to our book, let me know - I will PM it to you.

[aclee]

speaking of binding...I totally agree! We got ours bound at Staples, and I think they held together much better than way., over stapling, or ribbon binding that I've known others to use. After we adopted Tyler one of the agencies actually offered to return all our books to us. You could tell that the ones we got back had been shown and shuffled around a lot, but they held up really well with the spiral binding we did.

[ChromaKelly]

I made ours with Picaboo. I'm a scrapbooking dummy, so it was very easy to do. I also lucked out that Picaboo was having a half price sale, so I was able to get 12 books for the price of 6. Some of the books went out and never came back, which stinks, but it happens.
Oh, and I made a page titled "Family" and included pictures of both mine and DH's family and a short paragraph about each.

[Fran27]

We did ours on the computer also. Mostly because our agency only wanted one page (two sides), and 14 copies of it. We only mentioned our families briefly but it was because there's just so much you can say in one page.

[jamesandtiffanyadopt]

My suggestion remains Shutterfly | Develop, Print & Share Digital Photos: Create Photo Gifts Online our portfolio is on it and there is a great amount of adoption portfolios to look at with adoption topics. It's easy and cheap!
Best wishes, Tiffany
James and Tiffany's Adoption Website

[Amber76]

I did ours the old-fashioned scrap book way, and then made color photo copies on cardstock. Instead of binding them, we put them into a bound book that had plastic sleeves to insert pages. That worked out great for us. If you don't mind, PM me with which agency you decided to go with!

[mdesi]

We used Micro Soft publisher. DH is good with that program. I did most of the writing, and he did all of the graphics. It is beautiful, and we have gotten a lot of positive feedback about it. Honestly, I love the way our's turned out.

[StorkWatcher]

Hi! If it's the agency I PMd you about today, my friend who will be soon finishing her homestudy with them said they now recommend using online services to make a book - she used Picaboo. Hers looks really nice. If I got to ever do another one, I'd probably do that. Then I could easily order a second to save for my child as a keepsake.

[emdmom]

Thanks! Picaboo is what I use now so I am halfway there!

[jp4ga]

We put ours together and had Staples print and bind them for us. They turned out great. The only problem I found is that some of the agencies give them to pbmoms to look at and they are not always returned. It really should not be that hard to return the profiles of the people you do not choose. We found ourselves having to order more copies.

[meghann]

I'd suggest asking at your agency to see if they recommend one way or the other. I had also gotten into digital scrapbooking when we were gearing up to make our profiles & was planning to do it that way, but our caseworker said they actually recommend against that for exactly the reason you noted - they had gotten feedback that indicated to them that a lot of emoms didn't find them as "personal."

I did just one copy of ours by hand & then had copies made at the UPS Store (they were having a sale on colour copies that week, lol). Our agency had a particular type of book they had to be put in - we couldn't just have them printed & bound at Kinkos or the like - so you might check on that with your agency as well.

As far as who we included - extended family, friends, pets - everyone who is important in our life was in that book. We figured it was important because they would all be important in our baby's life as well. If it would help you to see an example, my profile is still on my Webspace at http://www.chez-french.net/images/profile.pdf.

[emdmom]

Thank you for sharing your profile! I have saved the link. Your profile is just my style and I like a lot of what you included.