DIY Disney themed photo books

Minnie Mouse for a DIY Disney themed photo book

Disney themed photo books are not the easiest thing to make because, from what I've found, there's only one online scrapbooking service that offers Disney packages.  I looked around for awhile after our recent trip and found that Snapfish offers Disney themes for an added prices -- albeit not too much.  The only problem, and what stopped me from using that service, is you can only pick one theme for the entire book and you can't mix and match with other Disney-related photo themes.  If you want your entire Disney photo book with a Mickey theme or want your entire family vacation on a Princesses backdrop you're in luck.  I was not a fan of being limited by just one theme so I set out to make my own Disney themed book.


I like Mixbook for the simple fact that I'm comfortable on the program.  I think it offers a lot of options for creativity and you can make it as simple or as complex as you like.  They do offer some decent coupons on their photo books, but not quite as good as the other digital photo book companies, so you'll have to weigh your options.  For a travel book, I don't usually have as many pages as a yearly photo book of my family so the books are still pretty reasonable.

Anyway, for my Disney themed book on Mixbook, I started with their free princess theme -- pretty much because my daughter was dressed in a princess dress everyday of our trip.  However, I only used the pre-built theme on a few pages and the others I deleted the actual template and added my own.

On most of the other pages, I searched for "stickers" (which they have a ton) to go with the theme of my pictures. For example, on my page with pictures of our "Chef Mickey's" dinner I added solid colored kitchen utensil stickers (a whisk, measuring spoons, salt and pepper shakers) which gave it a whimsical feel.  I found some really cute elephant stickers and added them on the page where I had photos of my kids on the Dumbo ride.   For the first page of my album, I had some shots from the airport and plane and I used the "travel" theme with some baggage tag stickers.

Other stickers I found useful: 

• Roses for Beauty and the Beast
• Seashells for The Little Mermaid
• Pirate-related stickers (flags, ships, skull and crossbones) for Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean 
• Stickers of princess, wands, crowns, banners

Use can also use geometric shapes to create your own Disney-themed backgrounds and stickers. Below you can see how I've quickly put together a few in Powerpoint.  I left the outlines on so you can more easily see how the simple shapes can be turned into Disney themes when blended together.  For my photo book, I took the border off to make them appear as one shape as opposed to three separate circles. (In Mixbook, you can make these shapes in the actual book and without using Powerpoint).

• Three black circles and you have a Mickey Mouse head
• Three black circles, a red circle and two red triangles and you have Minnie Mouse.  
• A couple of rectangles next to each other topped by triangles and you have a castle. 
• A rectangle with two triangles on the bottom and you have a banner that's perfect a page with photos from a meal with the princesses. 

A few things to keep in mind to enhance your DIY Disney photo album: 

• All -- or at least many -- of you pictures scream "Disney" so don't feel like the background has to scream Disney, too.  A simple bright background color like red, yellow, blue or pink can really make your busy Disney pictures pop off the page.  A red background with some big white polka dots and you have an instant "Minny" theme.
• Plan ahead by taking pictures of Disney "stuff" and attraction/park signs.  For example, I snapped pictures like this Mickey cupcake and found, while making my photo book, it was great for a page with other photos of our character meals. 

Here's a sneak peak of the Disney photo album I'm currently working on if you're interested in how I've incorporated the ideas above.

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What tips and tricks do you have for making Disney theme photo books? I'd love to hear your ideas for added inspiration.