There is no denying that creating a photo book or just flipping through its pages can provide endless fun and a pleasant trip down memory lane. However, as much as a photo book is one of the most personal ways of preserving important moments, it’s still just a plain book. Unfortunately, the fate of most books is to end up on bookshelves without ever being opened again.
Yet just as the digital photo frame changed how we displayed our photos in our home, a bit of thinking outside the box can save photo books from being forgotten, too. Enter accordion photo books, the simple yet ingenious concept that transforms photo books into a clever and stylish display of your best photos.
The fact that it’s a fun reimagination of the traditional photo book format is just one reason why accordion photo books should be given a try. But it’s also worth considering that accordion photo books are produced the same size as mini photo books, though in many instances they can be even smaller. Thanks to this drastic reduction in size, it’s possible to keep accordion books next to you, creating enough of an incentive to flip through them from time to time. For this reason, accordion photo books are perfect gifts for any occasion, since they are compact enough to be portable while at the same time fulfill the purpose of traditional photo books, too.
In addition to that, the shape of accordion photo books – which resemble multiple ‘W’s glued together – allows them to be stood up and left open without using a stand or another object. All you need to do is fully open the book on the pages you want to showcase, put it onto a bookshelf or a table, and you have a makeshift photo display that doesn’t even require batteries.
As much as accordion photo books can be a funky alternative to their traditional counterparts, there are some severe limitations to this medium. The biggest issue of accordion photo books is that the pages are made out of sturdier materials to substitute for the book’s lack of a spine, and as such the number of pages can never exceed 20. Even worse is that due to the size limitations, text and other embellishments are almost always omitted from these photo books, whereas page layouts can only vary between one photo per page, two-page spreads, full (panoramic) spreads, and a combination of the three.
The real blow, however, is that you’ll need a magnifying glass to find a photo book company that allows customers to make accordion photo books in the same manner as they would with their traditional photo books. In fact, out of all the photo product companies we have tested so far, only Mpix offers this special type of photo book. Thankfully, however, the selection of Mpix’s accordion photo books is actually quite impressive, even going as far as to spice things up by offering various covers and fun themes that also includes customizable photo calendars.
Since there aren’t too many options for photo book companies offering accordion photo books, turning to the DIY approach is a handy alternative. However, unlike traditional photo books – which are virtually impossible to recreate in the same quality as photo printing companies – creating an accordion photo book at home is ridiculously easy.
For the simplest of accordion books all that is needed is standard cardstock paper cut in half vertically, after which the two halves can easily be bent into the required ‘W’ shape. As for how many times this process should be repeated is completely up to you, but it’s best to take into consideration how many photos you’ll want in the new book and glue together the necessary number of ‘W’s accordingly.
Doing it this way also allows you to create more pages than necessary to leave space for future photos, but in such a case make sure to perform a quick test to see how the book looks when being opened and closed. And to perfect the illusion, try adding a cover to the book by gluing two pieces of wrapped cardboard onto the first and last pages and decorating as you wish.
©2012-2025 Best Reviews, a clovio brand –
All rights
reserved
User feedback