When I was looking to buy 'The Book of Me' after finding some information about it, for some reason I ended up buying 'The Book of Us' first!! I think it was a lack of stock of the first one at the time, so I bought The Book of Us instead... you know how impatiently we want stuff once we decide to order/buy!

Anyway, when I read 'The Book of Us' I was really pleased with it's content - I particularly like making mini Albums and there are lot of examples in this book.

It includes some circle journals, tag books, altered items (such as fiction books) and themed mini albums, along with other standard 12x12 layout examples.

I then bought 'The Book of Me' (or BOM!), and because I already had the other book, I was initially a little disappointed with this one (which was published in 2002 and therefore 3 years before 'The Book of Us'). The page layouts are much simpler, with a lot of plain cardstock used, and I assume that this is basically because the products just weren't available back then.

However, I don't regret buying The BOM because it contains a lot of quotes, and (I think) more importantly Prompts for pages, titling and journalling. It includes ideas for collecting memorabilia (at the time!) and photo opportunities. I have used a number of the ideas in this book.

BOM takes you through ideas for Scrapbooking your Childhood through various chapters including Homemaking, Friendships, Work life, Personal emotions and Hopes & dreams. I think one of the best parts of the the book is that you can read the heartfelt and genuine journalling on the scrapbooking layouts, which is definitely inspirational for me. BOM has 15 Chapters over 80 pages.

The Book of Us has 10 chapters over 160 pages and includes many detailed pictures of sumptuous projects, mini albums and page layouts, from many different crafters, as can be seen in the Circle Journal pages alone!

There is a lot of visual inspiration in The Book of Us and I regularly refer to it's pages for ideas. I do refer to both books for prompts and ideas and have used the quotes listed helpfully down the edges of the pages, many times.

So all in all I would recommend both books, but if you are a more experienced scrapper needing visual inspriation, then The Book of Us is a better buy for you. But if you would like some guidance on how to express yourself in your own "Book of Me" pages, then 'The Book of Me' is for you.