Shutterfly Guard

I absolutely love my hard bound books that come from Shutterfly! I am busy creating another book. This one is with a heritage theme.

There is one difficulty with creating layouts to be printed in hardbound books. When the pages are uploaded to Shutterfly (or other services online), the binding of the book will pull in some of your page. If there is any important parts of the layout too close to the edges where the binding is created (layout on left side of binding would be cut off on the right side/layout on the right side of binding would be cut off on the left side), such as photos or text, you may be displeased with the outcome of your book.

There are templates available which can be found at Shutterfly or purchased at numerous digital scrapbooking sites (many of which will note "Shutterfly ready"); however, I find all of the thinking in advance of which page will be on which side of the binding a bit too much work for this feeble brain. I do not want to work so hard! I want this to be easy! I want this hobby to be enjoyable and relaxing! Even with the templates, one must plan somewhat!

Therefore, to make life easy, I simply keep all vital information (photos and text) three-fourths to one inch from all edges. To make it even easier, I place my Shutterfly Guard on the top layer of my layout, turning on and off the visibility of the guard as necessary to check the positioning of my vital layers.

This graphic shows the Shutterfly Guard as the grey area. Papers, mats, ribbons, and similar elements that do not matter whether or not they are cut off are okay to be beyond the Shutterfly Guard.

Of course, it is simple enough to create your own Shutterfly Guard, but I am providing you mine for convenience.

You can download my Shutterfly Guard by clicking here. (or in the Subscriber Area).

You can find my layouts using this Shutterfly Guard in the Heritage Challenge threads (here).

Here is this layout without the Shutterfly Guard visible, ready for printing. Yes, your pages may not be perfectly centered in your book as they would be if you used the templates and more brain power, but I can say that I used this method and the slight imperfection was not noticeable.