Enhance your rugged travel photos with the
backgrounds from the Outdoor Adventure theme.

If you like outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, camping or fishing, you’re probably really looking forward to spring about now. It’s the time of year when the boat, sport and travel shows come to town and we’ve all had enough of the cold. As you gear up for spring it might just be the perfect time to break out the photos from last year’s camping trip and make a great travel and adventure themed photo book.

When we first started creating themes and collections of backgrounds for Inkubooks, we thought we had all our bases covered. We had a variety of family themes, kid themes, and travel themes, not to mention the more practical themes such as cookbook, business book, and portfolio. Then someone on the Inkubook team said, “Where’s the manly outdoors theme? You know…the one for people who like to hike and camp and stuff like that?” That’s when we realized that we’d overlooked the outdoor enthusiasts in the crowd, and we decided we’d better correct that situation PDQ.

Swatches from the Outdoor Adventure Theme

Hence the Outdoor Adventure theme was born. All of the backgrounds in this collection are clean and simple, so your photos can do the talking. This theme is inspired by the types of trail signs you might see in a state or national park and the color scheme runs toward the colors you’d find when shopping for gear at an outdoor outfitter: foresty green, earthy sand, and fiery orange (although it’s not quite fiery enough to be called blaze orange).

If your vacations and weekend getaways are about roughing it with a tent, an outdoor shower, and a camp stove instead of a down comforter, a whirlpool garden tub, and a five-star restaurant, this theme is for you. Look for it in the Travel category when you start a new book. (And if you prefer a more luxurious vacation, you might want to check into our other travel themes.)

A family cookbook can include favorite recipes,
family photos, and colorful backgrounds.

Almost every family has a collection of recipes that are staples either for nightly dinners or for special occassions. For example, a birthday in our family can’t pass without homemade deep dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting. And even without all the recipes that have been passed down through the generations, there are new favorites that enter the rotation all the time, and it’s high time they were all collected in one place.

While it would be perfectly adequate to use Inkubook to create a cookbook that uses plain white on each of the pages, we thought it would be a little more exciting to design some attractive backgrounds to help set off recipes and photos. Whether you include photos of the family members who contributed the recipes, of the people who claim the recipes as their favorite dishes of all time, or of the prepared dishes themselves, having photos in your cookbook will make it more personal and visually interesting, and our backgrounds can enhance that.

Backgrounds from the Cookbook Collection

Backgrounds from the Fundraiser Cookbook Collection

Backgrounds from the Tailgating Cookbook Collection

We didn’t stop with only one collection of backgrounds, though, because we know that cookbooks can serve different purposes. First we have the collection that is simply called Cookbook. There’s no particular theme in this one other than it provides a nice splash of color to the pages. For a cookbook in which you want to divide the recipes according to main ingredient or type of dish,  as when you make a cookbook to sell to raise money for a service organization or charity, we have the Fundraiser Cookbook collection. It features a series of attractive solid backgrounds that have just the hint of an image in the corners. Last, but certainly not least, is the Tailgating Cookbook collection, which features elements common to tailgating parties, picnics, and barbecues. Photos from your favorite sporting events and recipes that travel well in a cooler or without refrigeration will look great in a cookbook adorned with these backgrounds.

As always, we think you shouldn’t let us limit your creativity in making your cookbook. There’s no reason you can’t use backgrounds from all these collections in one book. Simply start by picking one of these themes from the Cookbook category when you start a new book, then use the Get More Backgrounds button to add other backgrounds to your gallery.

Click here to print
a copy of the coupon.

If you’re already an Inkubook member you may have received this offer in an email recently. If not, now is an excellent time to create a free account. If you love making photo books but also want to save some money, Inkubook is offering free shipping until February 28, 2009. Free shipping is the perfect reason to take advantage of the lull between holiday festivities and the start of spring activities by making a book with photos from the winter season or working on a gift book for later in the year. (Don’t forget: Mother’s Day will be here before you know it.)

To take advantage of this offer enter coupon code LUVFREESHIP at checkout. Offer good for free ground shipping to U.S. addresses on your entire order. Coupon cannot be combined with any other offer. Limit one use per customer.