Personalised Christmas Cards with Paperless Post

This is a sponsored post

  

Every year we seem to get fewer and fewer Christmas cards - actual Christmas cards, that is. With an increasing focus on climate change and the environment, it just doesn’t seem right any more to be sending out dozens and dozens of cards - not to mention the cost of the stamps.

That’s not to say I am against the idea of sending cards at all, for one thing I love to make greetings cards so of course I like to send them! But with a very active toddler I hardly have any time any more and the idea of sitting down to write a pile of Christmas cards seemed a bit overwhelming.

Instead, I sent cards to family and a few others but for the most part, decided to send e-cards this year. I’ve used Paperless Post before so went straight back there this time to make our Christmas card.

We had a Christmas themed photo shoot for my daughter in November - we’d done the same the year before when I was on maternity leave via a ‘bumps and babies’ group and as it was really good value, we did the same again this year.

The photos aren’t particularly Christmassy - my daughter is wearing a pretty red velvet dress but there were no props or Christmas images in the photo. Even so, I thought it would be nice for a Christmas card.

Paperless Post has sections for all sorts of greeting cards ranging from birthday cards to event invitations and also business flyers. I went to the Christmas section and looked at cards where you could add your own photos - there were well over 200 designs.

I chose one that I liked and uploaded the photo just by a couple of clicks, then added wording, selected whether I wanted a coloured background and the envelope. It’s really easy to add multiple recipients’ email addresses, and if you have used Paperless Post before, it remembers addresses, so you just have to start typing in the person’s name. That made it so quick to set up a list and to send the card out.

As I ended up doing it quite late at night - as is often the case when you have a toddler - I was also able to schedule the card to be sent at a suitable time, which was a function I liked.

The site uses ‘coins’ to pay for the cards, which you buy in blocks, with the price per unit decreasing the more coins you buy at once. You can get a card for just a couple of coins which as far as I can tell works out at less than sending a card in the post given the price of stamps these days.

My family and friends seemed to like receiving a personalised card and I think the pictures of my daughter were particularly appreciated by family even though I was giving people a print out of some of the photos anyway - and using Paperless Post made doing my Christmas cards a lot easier this year!

Thanks to Paperless Post who gave me coins to use on their site in return for this post. All opinions are my own.

Greek Summer Salad and a Photo Board backdrop for better blog photos

I want to tell you about a salad that I made and also a great product I found that will make taking photos for your blog or Instagram better straight away. But first the salad...

We went to a friend's barbecue yesterday which was lovely - my little girl enjoyed laying on a blanket in the shade and watching everything that was going on and meeting some of my friends for the first time. Here's a little photo of her for no reason other than she's cute!

My friend asked us to bring a salad and I decided to make a sort of Greek salad - it was very simple and doesn't really need a recipe! Simply half some cherry tomatoes, cut some feta cheese into cubes, slice some black olives and remove the stones (I actually used ready sliced ones from a jar) and tear some fresh basil leaves. Toss with a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper for a simple but tasty salad.

I'm really pleased with this photo which I think is called a flat lay in style (i.e. a birds eye view). It was taken on my kitchen table which is made of glass - so it's a terrible surface for photograph and I usually put a mat or table cloth or something on it when I want to photograph food, but my table cloths always have creases and none of my mats are very big.

I came across a company called Photo Boards that makes backdrops for taking photos against. They use 'texture reproduction technology', whatever that is, so the boards look more three dimensional and not like a photo of a piece of wood - I think they actually look like you are using a piece of wood, rather than a large flat piece of PVC. They are lightweight and wipe clean which is great when you are photographing food, come in two sizes (I bought the 60x60cm one, the larger size) and a variety of designs and shades that look like you are photographing against wood, marble, linen etc. They are not cheap at £30 each so I only bought one, but I already want another!

Waterloo Cafe, Wootton St, London and Photoion Photography School

Believe it or not, I'm really into photography. I say believe it or not because I know that some of the photos on this blog are not very good at all. When I cook a meal from a new recipe for dinner, and want to take a photo, it's often 8pm already and I just want to eat, not faff around with cameras and lights, so grab my mobile for a quick snap!

When I do have time I put in more effort - I've got lights, backdrops, an expensive camera and a variety of lenses. I tend to use my Canon 5D more for days out, holidays and - one of my favourites - portrait photography, whether that be people or animals.

I've done a few courses now with the Photoion Photography school – food photography, portrait and now macro photography.

 

 

The courses, taught by Ion, are really good – you don’t need the most expensive camera and you learn all sorts of techniques and tips, plus Ion will help set up some shots so you get great pictures on the day. With food and macro in particular it is hard to get the same shots on your own afterwards, unless you are very talented - but even then you may not have all the equipment or the understanding of the exact angle of light needed. Either way, I've had a lot of fun learning and trying out what I've learnt at home afterwards.

 

The classes are taught near Waterloo station which is fairly easy for me to get to, though as it does take a while I left extra time and arrived quite early before my class. I decided to go and get breakfast somewhere nearby and found myself in the Waterloo Café. It looked very cheap and cheerful - not a greasy spoon though but several of the other patrons were workers in high-vis jackets perhaps having breakfast or a break from work.

Downstairs there is a counter where you can buy food to take away, including some pastries and doughnuts that looked very good, and upstairs is a seating area with menus and waitress service. I didn't fancy breakfast 'proper' - I don't like full English and didn't want a sausage sandwich- so had a cheese toastie and a Ribena (which is basically juice, right?!). It was simple but good and set me up nicely for the rest of the day.

If you're into photography I highly recommend the Photoion Photography school - check out the different courses they offer on their website.

 

DIY Wedding: Photo Booth Props and Guest Book

 

 

Having a photo booth at your wedding has become quite popular, and I can vouch for the fact that they are great fun!

I got the idea from a friend's wedding as I thought a photo booth would be a fun thing for guest to do in the evening other than drink and dance. I'm not talking about when you get your passport photos done - these photo booths are creative, fun and personalised. You can choose your background and a style for the photos to be printed in, and they usually provide a whole host of props, hats and wigs and so on. Our guests had great fun piling into the booth in pairs and small groups throughout the evening!

Some photo booth hire companies give you two copies of each photo - one for the guest and one to go in your wedding guest book. But I knew that sometimes groups of friends would go in who all wanted a photo so I searched until I found a company that would give you unlimited copies of photos so everyone could have one.

I was also advised to make sure the photo booth had a good quality camera and printer - some apparently are only webcam quality and not very good! I decided to use a company called Funky Photo Booth who were local to my wedding in Wiltshire and was very pleased with their service - they even did a cowprint border for the photo prints!

 

Funky Photo Booth provided a selection of props ranging from giant sunglasses to silly hats, but I wanted something a bit more classy and also a few cow theme props, so I bought a couple of cow masks to add into the mix!

I also bought a set of cardboard chalk board style signs for a couple of pounds on Ebay. I stuck each one onto the lolly stick provided and wrote different slogans on them in chalk, which made for some amusing pictures.

As for the guest book itself, I bought a 12x12 black scrapbook from Hobbycraft which was perfect. There was plenty of space to stick the photos in the book and for people to write messages next to them, using the silver pens I also bought from Hobbycraft.

I used my Silhouette die cutting machine to cut out our names to stick on the front of the scrapbook, for an attractive personalised touch.

Looking through the guest book after the wedding was hilarious and reading the messages was lovely. It's so much more fun and memorable than a book where guests just write a message, and even though it wasn't cheap to hire the booth, it provided great entertainment in the evening for the guests as well.

 

 

Snapfish Personalised Photo Placemats for Valentine's Day

We weren’t going to do Valentine’s presents this year, as we have a wedding to pay for – which seems rather more important! But when I was asked by Snapfish, the photo prints and photo gifts website, to see if there was anything I liked on their site I jumped at the chance.

 

I did some crafting with Snapfish products last year and was really pleased; I noticed then that they had a huge range of ready made gifts which could be personalised with photos, which would be ideal for Valentine’s day. You could do a photo book or a canvas print for your Valentine, or a mug and key ring. I love the photo cushions as well – my sister got my mum one of these with a picture of her dog on it for Christmas and my mum said it was her favourite present!

 

As we are getting married in June I didn’t want to do a photo book or canvas print yet as we will hopefully have some amazing pictures from the professional photographer and there seemed no point using holiday snaps now. I didn’t think my fiancé would appreciate a picture of my cat on a cushion (even though I’d love it!) and we have far too many mugs in the cupboard already – so I wanted something we would actually be able to use and enjoy.

 

Snapfish offers photo personalised coasters and placemats which isn’t something I’ve seen on many photo sites and I thought it was a brilliant idea – something you might use every day or keep for special occasions, that can be a real talking point around the dinner table. Also, they do a set of 6 placemats for £24.99 which I think is quite good value, but also handy – the placemats I’ve already got came in a set of 4 and I often find I need one or two more. You can also buy individual placemats for £8.99 or a pair for £14.99 – just right for a Valentine’s gift.

 

I decided to get the full set of 6 and knew straight away I wanted to use photos of holidays my fiancé and I have taken together. It was hard to choose which pictures so I decided to narrow it down – he loves to visit the US, and we’ve been there three times in the five and a bit years we’ve been together. I thought he would really like the gift if I chose a set of 6 pictures from our favourite USA destinations – you can put the same picture on all the placemats if you like, or a different one on each, which is what I did.

The top photo in this pile was taken when we went to dinner at a restaurant on the banks of the Mississippi in Natchez.
 

The top two you can see here are Chicago by night, taken from the balcony of our hotel, and Monument Valley at sunrise.

 

 The placemats aren't huge but there is plenty of room for a dinner plate and they look really good quality - robust with a glossy finish. I'm looking forward to using them!
If you order from Snapfish before February 9 your order should reach you in time for Valentine's Day :-)

Thanks to Snapfish for the voucher towards the products I chose. All opinions are my own etc.

 

Embellished Photo Greetings Cards

You may have seen the family photo letter collage I already completed using my voucher from Snapfish, the photo printing people.
 

There was another idea I wanted to try, that uses a printed personalised photo from Snapfish but also allows for some homemade embellishment. I didn’t know until I started looking around the Snapfish site that they do personalised cards – you simply upload a photo and choose the card design. There are birthday cards, with the design already provided (eg an age, some animals and so on) or more blank, colourful backgrounds where your photo takes centre stage (you can also choose cards where you can add multiple photos). As well as personalised birthday cards they have a huge range for other occasions, some of which are folded cards you can write inside, and others are flat cards – like postcards, but used for save the date reminders for weddings and birth announcements and so on.

 

I chose a couple so I could experiment and see what they had, with the intention of using my craft supplies to add some finishing touches at home.

 

It’s my Dad’s 60^th birthday next month so I made him a personalised card with some family photos. There was a layout where all I had to do was drop in the photos:

 I wanted to add some extra embellishments so used a cardboard label mounted onto blue card saying 'for the world's greatest dad' at the bottom, and a silver outline sticker saying 'dad' in the top right corner. As the title of the card was 'birthday star' I put some silver star stickers in the top left corner as well.
 

 

My sister is in the process of buying a new house; I couldn’t find a layout suitable for ‘congratulations on your new house’ so instead chose a card saying ‘we’ve moved’. This is designed to tell people of a change of address but you can change the wording, so I changed it to congratulate my sister and her boyfriend on the new house. The space in the middle was to add a picture; if you were using this card to tell people you had changed address then a picture of the new house would be perfect! But as I didn't have that - my sister hasn't moved yet - and I wasn't sure what else to use, I decided she would like a picture of my cat! To me it looks a bit like the cat is peering through the letterbox :-)

 

Most of the 'new home' embellishments I had were too large to fit on this card but I did have a pack of stickers with clear backgrounds that I thought would work. It had a flower on it so I added some extra flower stickers around the card.

Personalised Christmas cards are a lovely idea, especially if you are sending them to family or friends you haven’t seen in a while. I didn’t really have any suitable photos from previous festivities (we don’t really do posed family photos) but I did have some nice ones of the holiday I took with my boyfriend to Lapland a couple of years ago. It wasn’t Christmas but there was still plenty of snow!

This card had a lovely background with snowflakes around the edge so I decided to embellish it with some extra snowflake stickers. You can't see them all too well in this photo but they are there!

Finally I used a collage layout for a birthday card and used pictures of different cakes I've made.

I embellished this using some little cupcake stickers on each point where the lines crossed:

 

All of these cards would be nice without the extra embellishments but I do think it's nice to add a little extra!

Thanks to Snapfish for the voucher code for their site

Family Photo Letter Collage

It was a year ago this month that my boyfriend and I bought and moved into our lovely house. We spent a couple of months working all-out on the redecoration, taking 2 weeks off work and then using every available weekend to paint, oversee new flooring, assemble furniture and so on. We took a breather as it was coming up to Christmas, and then… never really started again. Most of the house is finished – we just need to paint the bathrooms – but some of the finishing touches haven’t been done. To me, that’s things like putting up coat hooks and mirrors – but there are also a few decorative touches left to think about.

Ages ago I bought some cardboard letters spelling the word ‘home’ and some others spelling out 'Love' from Hobbycraft, and put them away until I could decorate them to display in our new home.

I hadn’t really thought about how I would decorate them, other than with patterned paper or fabric. Then Snapfish, the digital photo printing people, came along with an offer of a voucher towards products from their site – as long as I could craft with them.

That’s not as easy as it first sounds – they have loads of gifts and ready-made products on their site that you can personalise with photos, like photobooks, canvas wall art, mugs, calendars, jigsaws and so on. Most of those wouldn’t give me much to play with in terms of crafting. Their main offering of course is getting your photos printed so I decided to take that as a starting point for my crafting.

I remembered the cardboard letters and hit upon the idea of making them into a photo collage. After all, it is family and friends that make a house a home. This is also a good way to display a lot of photos if you don’t want to have a frame on every windowsill or shelf!

The letters I had were quite small – only about 10cm high – but luckily Snapfish has a product that is just right for this. If you’ve never bought a collage print before I highly recommend it. You can select up to 20 photos, and a print size of 6x4, 7x5 or 10x8 and it will arrange the photos in a collage – making some of them bigger and some of them smaller. If you don’t like the arrangement, you can shuffle and do it again. The largest size is only £1.09 and looks really nice in a frame – I did one of these with photos from a USA holiday I took a couple of years ago, and I also gave one to my parents with photos from a day we spent at Chelsea flower show a couple of years ago. The smaller photos are only 12p for 6x4 or 22p for 7x5.

You can cut these up to make wallet-sized photos or in this case I cut them up to glue onto my cardboard letters.

The 'love' letters came in a cute little box but the 'home' letters were from a different range (they may not even have been Hobbycraft actually) and weren't in a box, and I couldn't find the letter 'e'! Rather than turn my craft cupboard upside down I decided just to use the word 'love'.

This was much faster to make than you might think - I actually did it on the kitchen counter while I was cooking dinner! I simply cut up the collage print, selecting pictures that would fit on each part of each letter and glued them on. I covered the edges with offcuts of photos as you won't really see these, but I didn't want to leave them blank. I didn't bother covering the backs of the letters though.

It looked even better than I was expecting and fit perfectly into one of the cubes of this Ikea shelving unit that we have in the living room. The letters really stand out against the black wood and this now has pride of place in the living room.

Thanks to Snapfish for a voucher code for their site.

iPhone photography class - taking better food and restaurant pictures with your iPhone

A few months ago I went to an event hosted by the Ladies in Blogging group on how to take better photos with your iPhone.

The session was run by professional photographer James Madelin and the venue kindly provided by
Gillrays restaurant near the London Eye.

I learnt a lot and really enjoyed looking at James' photos. The information was pitched so it was good for beginners but even people who were quite good at taking photos with their phones (or thought they were) learnt quite a bit. The tips below apply to all smartphones- here is just a flavour of the things I learnt.

Did you know you can actually set the exposure of your phone? You just point it at the subject and touch the screen in the centre of the photo (i.e. the thing you want to be at the correct exposure so the food on a plate in a restaurant for instance) and it will set the exposure. This is how you stop photos of food taken in restaurants from looking too dark but also without having to blind people and draw attention to yourself by using the flash - I wish I knew this years ago!

Another key tip for taking photos of your food in restaurants - that left me going 'doh!' - is that as you will most likely be dining with someone else, get them to turn on the flashlight on their phone and use it to illuminate what you are photographing. It makes for a much better photo than using the flash on your own camera phone.

James also told us about HDR - high dynamic range, and said to make sure this is turned on. Mine seems to default to the off position after every photo. HDR takes three photos within very quick succession and exposes them differently; it then puts all three together so you get detail in both the light and the dark places in the photos. This is a really useful function and again one that I didn't even know existed, let alone used before!

The 'selfie camera' that lets you take a photo of yourself is only about a third the quality of the main camera facing outwards so you are better off turning the phone around and using that camera to take pictures of yourself.

You can use the volume button to take a photo so you can hold the phone like a camera; this is also useful when the angle of the photo means it is hard to press the round 'soft key' at the bottom of the screen.

If you have headphones plugged in to your phone you can also use the volume button on the headphone cable as a shutter release cable.

James stressed the importance of backing up and said that to him, until a photo is in three places it may as well not exist.

Five quick tips from James:
1. get high (with your camera). Don't take every photo at eye level.
2. get down (low) - get your camera into unusual places.
3. get close. As bloggers, you are members of the media so if you are at an event and want to take a photo but there are people in the way or a barrier (unless it is for your own safety), ask if you can get closer.
4. get clean - try to avoid distractions in the background of your photos. Train yourself to notice what else is in the frame of your picture.
5. get tricks - editing is important and there is plenty of free software you can use to improve photos.

Thanks to James and to Ladies in Blogging for hosting the event! It cost £15 for a ticket which included a glass of wine; given the amount I learnt I thought this was very good value.

A personalised Christmas gift: canvas photo picture

Handmade, homemade and personalised Christmas presents are brilliant. Whether it’s a salt dough decoration made by your toddler, some shortbread given by a friend, or a collage of photos made for a cherished family member you know that time and effort – and love – has been put into the creation of the gift. And what’s more, you end up with something really unique.

 

I’ve featured a few handcrafted gifts on this blog including a framed picture I made for the Christening of a friend’s baby, a Scrabble picture spelling out the names of my boyfriend’s brother and his wife and children, and these homemade bath fizzers.

 

Sometimes you don’t have time – or the necessary skills – to produce something handmade, and this is where specialist companies come into their own. The Creative Canvas Company contacted me a few months ago to ask if I would like to review a canvas picture that you put together yourself from uploading a photo to the site to building the canvas frame. I thought this would be the perfect housewarming gift for my boyfriend as we have just bought our first house together – moving and unpacking is the reason for the delay in posting this review!

 

The website was very easy to use – I went to the ‘photo canvas prints’ section and clicked on ‘get started’. You choose the style – you can have one large picture, or one large and two small, or a selection of smaller pictures like a collage on the same canvas. Then choose your size – you can see clearly the price you will pay for each type of picture and size so if you have a budget it’s easy to stick to it.

 

Uploading the photo and checking I was happy with how it was cropped and centred couldn’t be easier, and then it was just a case of paying and waiting for the picture to arrive.

 

It comes in a long thin box as you have to put the picture together yourself. I have to admit I was quite dubious about this - I bought two canvas photo pictures a few years ago that came ready made, but admittedly did cost more. As we unrolled the canvas and laid out the four posts I had a sinking feeling that this might not work, but I needn't have worried.

 All you do is lay the four pieces of the frame out in the corners of your picture (with the photo facing downwards of course), then unpeel the sticky tape, cut a slit in each corner and fold the edges of the picture over the edges of the frame, then fold the four pieces of the frame inwards to make a sturdy box frame. Don't worry if that doesn't quite make sense - it comes with easy-to-follow instructions.

It also comes with a hook so it was really very easy to put together and hang on the wall. I gave this to my boyfriend as our housewarming present as we have just bought our first (and hopefully only!) house together. The photo is one I took of his car outside Leeds Castle on a Supercar day that was a wonderful day out and a lovely memory - and it looks pretty good!

It looks great on the wall of the 'man cave' above a scale model of his car that he had wanted for years which I finally managed to track down last Christmas!

I think something like this would make a great Christmas gift and you can of course use any kind of photo- you could even choose the collage style and make a framed picture for your wall of all your favourite things you have baked!

Thanks to the Creative Canvas Company for inviting me to try out their service and sending me the photo canvas free of charge.

Food Photography Lesson - How to improve your food photography

I'm well aware that the photographs I take for this blog aren't great - some are better than others, but that is often more luck than judgment. I've taken a few photography classes before, including portrait photography, so understand a reasonable amount about depth of field, aperture etc. My main problem when I am taking photographs of food is lack of time, and lack of light. I often cook or bake in the evening, when it is dark outside so I only have the lights on the ceiling to illuminate my dish and that just isn't enough (and you often get a lot of shadow). I am always in a hurry as well - I can take my time photographing cake, but when I've made hot food, that we want to eat, there isn't time to faff around trying different angles or rearranging the food. I do my best to make it look nice, but sometimes - despite using a good quality digital SLR - the photos I take amount to little more than a snapshot.

The Guardian newspaper recently ran a masterclass which featured an hour of one of their food journalists talking about writing and an hour of one of their photographers talking about styling and photographing food. It was really useful and I've written a summary here.

The session didn't involve actually using a camera though, and very little practical advice in terms of setting and lighting so I wanted to do a more in-depth course if I could. I had been looking online for a while but there don't seem to be many photography courses that specialise in food. So I was really pleased when my boyfriend found one and booked me onto it for a birthday present!

The Photoion Photography School (so called because it is run by a man named Ion) runs a vast range of courses from night photography, portraits, fashion, studio lighting, photoshop etc, as well as food photography. It's an all day course, from 10.30 to 4pm, near Waterloo station. The course is limited to five people so you get a lot of one-on-one contact, but you can also share ideas among the group.

The morning involved listening to Ion talk and answer our questions, which was very useful and informative and also quite entertaining. I wasn't at all bothered that we didn't even get out our cameras before lunch, as there was so much to take in, and we needed to know the theory before putting it into practice.

After a short break for lunch we spent the afternoon session photographing food. My only disappointment of the day was that for obvious reasons we weren't photographing hot food; I'm sure it's easier to take a photo of a few carefully positioned raw vegetables or cookies than it is to make a cooked dinner look appealing, so I would have liked to know more about that. Even so, the same principles can be applied.

We used an amazing array of equipment - most of it was not really that expensive, for instance a soft box to diffuse the light is about £40, and other things were homemade or very cheap - Ion had a clamp holding a couple of mirrors he'd taken from cheap makeup compacts, and also told us that the piece of card that comes in a packet of smoked salmon - silver on one side and gold on the other- makes a great reflector!

First we photographed a rustic loaf of bread, some tomatoes, olives, garlic and green chilli on a chopping board, experimenting with different settings and lighting. Here you can see some of the set-up.

In this picture, there is additional light from small mirrors directed at the tomatoes to make them look particularly shiny.

 This one is looking directly down on the food

 We then had some fun arranging vegetables on a plate to ressemble a face; the background is a cheap tea towel which I think works really well here.

 Next we tried another rustic collection, on the same tea towel; we matched the colours and textures of the foods and also included a wooden spoon in this shot. The small cookies in the top right again have extra light directed onto them by mirrors.

I asked Ion how to photograph something on a black background and I'm really glad I did, as this was the result: 

In this case it's probably about the camera settings as much as the lighting. I just hope I can remember how to do it again!

This photograph has the same black background but it looks grey due to the lighting. It took a few attempts to get the light right both from above and from the side of the fruit to avoid too many shadows.

 Here's another picture of the set-up for our final shoot,. of a Danish pastry and some strawberries on a chopping board.

We used a gold reflector to give the pastry a warm glow.

I'm not going to share too many tips with you - you'll have to book the course if you want to find out more. But some key ideas I took away were:

• Natural light is not necessarily better than artificial light, as you can't control it - what you really want is to replicate natural light, but be able to control it.
• Always diffuse your source of light, eg with a softbox or tracing paper 
• A photo isn't finished until you make any final adjustments in Photoshop 
• Zooming in with a longer lens is better for food photography than getting in close with a smaller lens - this really surprised me, but the results speak for themselves.
• Think about background - food often looks best on wood, and you can buy pieces of vinyl that have a wood effect (much easier to roll up and put in your bag)
• White plates are actually the worst thing to photograph food on, even though dishes look great when served that way. Use coloured plates instead.

I really enjoyed the class and learnt a lot; I highly recommend the Photoion Photography School!