One of the things on my ‘to do’ list for a while has been to print off photographs, something I have gotten quite lazy at doing since using my Samsung Galaxy phone as my main camera. Our photos are now constantly at our disposal on our phone galleries and on social media – but it is nice to have some of the best ones on display.
I used to love my old Canon Sureshot film camera, -when I had my first daughter in 2006, I still used film, and I used to love having my pictures developed (opting for the one hour service as I was impatient). I then used to lovingly put my pictures into albums, captioning each one.
When I joined Facebook in 2007 and started uploading all my pictures on there I stopped printing pictures off as often as I should. I don’t think I’ve updated my real photo albums since 2009 which is such a shame as my children really enjoy looking at them.
Most of the framed pictures indoors are at least four years old and I’ve been desperate to get some new frames and create a gallery wall.
Snapfish has always been my company of choice when printing digital photos, I’ve been using them since 2007, and the prints have always been great quality a good price and delivered promptly.
I wanted to create a wall showing a mixture of photographic prints, art prints, my painted signs and canvases with a mixture of sizes, and a variety of frames.
Snapfish offer a lot of different options, you can choose to have your pictures printed in a matt of gloss finish and you can upload straight from Facebook or Instagram, but I’d only suggest doing this for 6x4 inch prints otherwise you will lose quality as the pictures are a lower resolution. It’s best to upload straight from your camera or laptop if possible. If you’re like me, I often like to edit my pictures in Photoshop first, but there are options on Snapfish to enhance your images.
Snapfish also offer canvases, poster prints, photo books and even cushions and other gifts.
I went for a 10x12 inch print of my daughter spinning in the lavender, and a mixture of 10x8; 8x6; 7x5 and 6x4 prints all in a matt finish. I also ordered an 8x8 inch slim-line canvas. The order arrived within seven days of being placed and all of the images were of brilliant quality. I also downloaded a couple of arty prints from Pinterest, if you have a look you will find some free printables.
The frames were all cheap ones from Wilkinsons, Pep & Co, TK Maxx and three of them were wedding presents. I paid between 25p and £2.50 per frame.
To create the gallery wall, we worked around a large shabby chic wooden sign as the centre. I had drawn a bit of a diagram about how I thought the pictures should be set out and we worked loosely around it. I didn’t want it to look too symmetrical but I also didn’t want it to look like they’d been thrown at the wall. Lee has got a very good eye for things like this, so he stood and held up the pictures and then when we were happy he nailed in the hooks and hung the pictures.
We are so pleased with how the wall looks, we finally have some wedding pictures up alongside some of our favourite pictures of the children.
There are lots of prints leftover too, some will eventually go into more frames and the rest into an album.
The Snapfish App for IPhone and Android is available for download, exclusive to the app are 4x4 Instagram prints. I have so many pictures on my Instagram which I adore, so my next aim will be to create a display of Instagram photos for our staircase. I have downloaded the app and will be giving this a try in February.
It looks great to mix the pictures with some art work - so my plan is to paint a few more pictures myself. Last week a painted a canvas which got ripped by my cats who knocked over a step ladder - and I quickly wrote out a 'Run Wild My Child' quote in black pen, just to get a few ideas - as we'd also like to get our staircase looking good soon.
See the hole my cats created in the above canvas? Absolute b@$*!#?ds......
As you can see, it is really easy and affordable to add a bit of a change to your home. Clip frames in particular are really cheap, this pack of three 10x8 inch only cost 50p.
