It used to be that you would have to send away your pictures to a company that would then charge you a great deal of money to bind your photo book.

Nowadays, you can download a photo program from one of a hundred or more online companies that will mail you back a finished book – for a moderate amount of money.

My simple solution? For about $7, using your own photos, you can make your own photo book of about 50 glossy pages (25 back-to-back pages). It will take:

1. Picasa — a free download from Google, and a wonderful photo editing and arranging program! Their collage feature is all it takes.
You can arrange the pix (using their arrangements, or creating your own), size them, orient them, change backgrounds.
2. A cut-up ¼ inch foam board
3. Some scrapbook paper (12” x 12 ¾” – or larger)
4. Scotch transparent tape
5. A metal ruler
6. A couple of Elmer’s extra strength glue sticks
7. A pack of 150 glossy sheets of photo paper from Costco ($.12/sheet)
8. A sharp exacto-type knife

In a few hours, total, you can show your finished album/book with hundreds of photos (6 photos/page, with 50 pages, gives you 300 photos – in a relatively thin book), with no photos dropping out or fading.

Email me at robertebsen@hotmail.com for instructions and how-to photos.