Creating an instant heirloom with Montage

4 May 2015

I’m big on suggesting that you don’t give Mother’s Day gifts that will end up being clutter. (See my post, Worth repeating: Don’t give your mom clutter for some non-cluttering gift ideas.)

I usually give my 80+-year-old mother something consumable that won’t linger in her condo. But this year I did something different and I’m really pleased with the gift. (My parents don’t have a computer, so there’s no way they’ll read this and spoil the surprise.)

I used Montage to make a photo book for her, full of current-ish family photos, most of which were taken on a recent visit I took to visit my parents with my niece and nephew, who live in Australia. Their visits are understandably rare, so these family photos are precious.

I was thrilled when the Montage book arrived. It had two features I love:

High quality materials: It’s a hard-cover book with thick pages that lay flat
It was eally easy to create

The deal with Montage is that you upload the photos and the website “auto-magically” places them in the book. You can fiddle around with them if you want. You can select different designs. You can change formats a bit. Or you can let it be easy and take what is presented to you. I pretty much accepted the layout presented, with just a few tweaks.

The gift isn’t inexpensive—Montage books come in three sizes and prices points and I went with medium.

I created the gift—one that will become a treasured heirloom after my parents are gone—in under 30 minutes. And it arrived in about three days.

In order to use Montage, you have to cede some control. That was fine with me because I don’t have the skill set to design a great photo book. If you prefer more control, you might want to check out Montage’s sister company, Mixbook, which gives you a lot more design tools. (That’s where I started and was delighted to find a link to Montage there.)

Edited to add: After my mother received this gift, she called and told me it was the best give she’d ever received. She passed away just six weeks later so she didn’t get to enjoy it for very long. But I was so glad I’d given her the pleasure of that book.

Tagged with: gift giving, mothers day, photographs