Snapbox photo printing service - review

I love taking photos. I love to document my day. I carry a small Fuji Fine pix camera around with me all the time and I snap away, documenting and capturing what I do, as I do it. I use these images in so many ways - I obviously use them on here :-), I use them to illustrate talks and lecture notes; I refer to them to see what I was doing and when, I check back to see what "this time last year" looked like in the garden, and so on.

I don't pretend to be a particularly good photographer, but occasionally I do see an image I have captured and thought "ooh I like that - I wish I could have that as a print" but somehow I never get around to actually printing it off. I used to print off a lot of my shots in the good old days of film but since the advent of digital cameras I haven't done much printing.


Anyway I was thinking about  printing off a couple of my recent images, and wondering if I had enough printer cartridge left and if I had any of the "special" photo paper left, when I was contacted by SnapBox  an innovative digital photography service newly launched in the UK by established fine art printing company, JONDO.

Now Snapbox have conducted some research and apparently I am not the only person who no longer prints off their images. Their press release highlighted that

people have fallen out of love with the tradition of printing and displaying photos in the home with the top reason (19 per cent of respondents) being that they now have far too many photos to choose from, possibly following the surge in daily smartphone photography.

over a third of Brits (36 per cent) have lost valuable photos after relying on their smartphones to store them. New innovative digital photography service, SnapBox, found this includes ten per cent from dropping their phone down the toilet (4 per cent whilst drunk!) closely followed by eight per cent in the bath.

As you may remember Compostman has been refurbishing and redecorating the guest bedroom and it will (very soon!) become our room. We have a new colour scheme on the walls, a new floor, new blinds, a new flower bed to look out at, so what better way to brighten up one of the windowless walls than to put up a lovely print?

Snapbox very kindly offered me a free print in return for trying out the service so I went to the website, uploaded my chosen image from my computer, cropped it until I liked what I saw, picked a size and then put it in my basket. During the process you get to see what the print looks like, in the frame, against a wall. A few more key strokes and lo, I had purchased a print to hang on the wall. 

The whole process took me less than 10 mins from start to finish and was much like loading images onto Blogger (only faster!) 

Aapparently you can also upload a photo from your mobile device, or select one from your Facebook albums. Alternatively you can email an image from your device to Snapbox.

I can't wait to see what my framed, mounted print looks like, I will let you know when it arrives :-)

 Disclaimer -This post features a paid link to a company who sent me a voucher for a free print, in return for me trialling the website and going through the ordering process. 
As always, the words I write are my own and are my honest opinions.

Saturday - in the house, in the garden, in the wet, in the dry, in the polytunnel, out shopping and getting lucky.

First of all, welcome to my new followers, Joshua Heaton, Jille and Rose :-) Hope you are enjoying yourselves.

Today we had very very changeable weather but I managed to dry some washing and do some planting out in the veg patch while it was sunny.

I am planting up one of the raised beds with my Rocket Gardens Constant Gardens selection of veg plants - they have grown well in their pots and it is now time to put them outside in their final places. But because of the naughty hens and cats, as well as the ever present wild life, I need to protect the bed. 

I am rather proud of what we (mainly Compostman)  came up with.

Some blue water pipe ( free, from the Scrapstore) and some bits of metal pipe ( free - have been hanging around in the Barn waiting for a use by Compostman)  But I then found that my horticultural fleece and mesh fabric lengths were all too long but not wide enough - so to cover the bed I had to use two sheets and have a lot of spare fabric at one end AND work out a way to fix the sheets together. Hmm will have to think about this!

After working outside on the raised bed, the heavens opened, the rain fell and I got soaked, so retreated to the shelter of the polytunnel. Still at least the raised bed plants got a good watering!

Compostman very kindly tied the tomato plant canes to the roof for me, so they stay upright :-)

 Growing well :-)

I did a lot of potting on of my veg plants, and re arranged the peppers into their final position.

I do wonder why, when I plant out plants, I still seem to have more on the bench?

This is my version of a Salad bar :-) I can go out with my basket and cut some salad and it grows some more :-)

Later on this afternoon we are going into Hereford. I am a member of the B and Q club and this weekend I have a 15% off voucher and as we need to think about paints for the bedroom decoration ( yes it is now at the "what colour paint shall we have" stage!) we are going to have a look at what they have to offer.

Update later this evening. 

We went into Hereford to B and Q and bought all sorts of stuff we needed, including solid wooden flooring for the bedroom (gulp). The 15% off voucher saved us a lot of money on the floor and paint for the bedroom. Hopefully we will be moving back in soon and I can't wait!

We also popped into Sainsbury and got items on the shopping list and then I spotted some garden netting  which was the perfect size to cover the supports we had put up this morning for the raised bed.  On offer and reduced to £3.50! I bought four packs, one for each raised bed, for a total cost at full price of one pack :-) 

And so when we got home, before it got dark and in the pouring rain, I did this

Exactly what I needed to cover the raised bed we had been working on and I used tri pegs ( bought many years ago and used for all sorts of jobs since) to fix it all down. This had been worrying me and now it is sorted

and has made the bed secure from cats, hens, etc . getting in there and digging up or eating the plants. Should stop the Cabbage White butterflies laying eggs on the brassicas as well.

Later, later still, well actually at silly o'clock when we should have gone up to bed, Compostman and I watched the first two episodes of The Black Adder from the Blackadder Complete DVD set, which I found in a charity shop ridiculously reduced in price :-)

 It is 30 years since we first watched it, and time has not dimmed the laughs for us and we can still sing the theme tune! And we raised a glass in honour of Sir Baldrick and Blackadder, CBE

So all in all, a good day, if a long one but my bed is calling me, now.

Blinded by the light - on being woken up earlier than I would like, and how to stop it.

At the moment we are sleeping in a bedroom which has one large window, facing East.  I recently noticed that I am being woken up, earlier than I want, by the early morning sun streaming in and hitting me in the face. We have lined curtains, but obviously not lined with thick enough material to block out sunlight.
 

Thinking about "covers for windows" and how well they work has become a higher priority for me because the Pink Bedroom, which Compostman is currently refurbishing, has not one but two large windows, one facing North and the other facing, yes you guessed it, East. So when we move into this room (soon!) we will have the same issue with early morning sunlight in our faces and an additional window letting in light. We can't turn our bed around, so we don't look at a window, as the shape of the room precludes that.
 
We always planned to move into this room when it was completed (only waited 16 years!) As we are now fast approaching the "choosing paint and fabric" stage of the works I need to find a solution to the problem now.

What I have done in other upstairs rooms is use blinds; to me they seem to block light without shutting it out altogether. Thinking about it, we actually have blinds in all the upstairs bedrooms except ours and the Pink Bedroom. Compostgirl has blinds and curtains in her (South facing) room and all the South and West facing windows downstairs have blinds. It is only the sitting room and dining room which have curtains.

So, problem solved - I will be getting some blinds for our new bedroom  - so the question is, what sort and what size? We want to measure and fit them ourselves rather than have someone do it for us, so after a quick Google search for bedroom blinds, I had a look at  Web-Blinds and found lots of helpful advice.  I had no idea there were so many different sorts of blind!

The Web-Blinds site also has lots of useful information on how to measure for a blind and a wide selection of different patterns and colourways. I also found easy to understand fitting instructions for all the different types of blind :-) And if you would rather someone measured and fitted them for you there is a link to their sister company, Hillarys.

In the other rooms I have simple roller blinds but I think for our bedroom I would like Roman blinds - although I am very tempted to get some roller blinds made using one of my own images (they call it a Digital blind on the Web-Blinds website)

Maybe something like this, from when I went to Garden Organic last year?

The bee garden at Ryton.

or this?

Marigold Hen

I think Compostman would prefer this, though!

The JCB

Hmm. Maybe just a nice, lightly floral pattern, instead?






Disclaimer - I am looking around for ideas to decorate the newly refurbished Pink Bedroom (may need a new name as it may not be pink much longer)  This post features a paid link to a company I would be happy to order from, in the future. As always, the words I write are my own and are my honest opinions.