As an avid scrapbooker with family members all over the United States , I wanted to find a way to share my scrapbooks.  So, in the spring of 2004 my husband and I started researching how to duplicate a scrapbook. 

We originally tried to create a duplicate ourselves but found that scanning the pages and ‘stitching’ the scanned images together was very time consuming and error-prone.  We also weren’t able to print 12” x 12” duplicates on our home inkjet photo printer.  In addition, when we adjusted the pages to print on 8.5” x 11” paper they looked good but the combined cost of the photo paper and the ink made it very expensive.

Next, we tried to use the copy centers, but again, we weren’t able to duplicate a full 12” x 12” page as the largest paper they had was 11” x 17”.

We then looked into having the duplicate pages printed as a large photo through Costco or Wal-Mart, but this turned out to be a very expensive alternative.

Finally, we spoke with several commercial printers, but they either weren’t interested in doing the work because of the time required to duplicate each page or they wanted to charge us lots of money.

At that point, we realized that every scrapbooker would probably like to share their scrapbooks with more people and were equally as frustrated trying to find a way to do it.  So, after much research, we figured out the best way to create a full-sized, 12” x 12”, duplicate that was on acid and lignin-free paper and could be done for less money than the photos and supplies required to recreate an album page and started Scrapbooks to Share.