HOW MUCH DO I LOVE SHUTTERFLY?
A LOT!
My grams got Zoo a Cabbage Patch Kid doll for Christmas this year and it came with a coupon for a free 8x8" Shutterfly book. (Shutterfly makes custom photo albums, prints, stationary, and the like.)
After hemming and hawing whether I had the time/energy to find enough pictures to fit a theme for a 22 page photo album, I decided it was totally worth it... 3 hours before my coupon expired.
I perused their site and was pleased to find they had adorable, professional, and cool design layouts just waiting for my indecisive mind to try to select. After picking the most basic template, I also decided on a "first words" book for the little ladies, working with my Instagram photos, some shots from Facebook, and of course, off my iPhoto library.
The "low resolution" warning label popped up on most of my pics, since the majority were from my iPhone. I was worried, but figured it was an experiment and wouldn't matter too much since I was only paying for shipping (about $8, by the way).
Besides being appalled and a little proud of how many times my coffee cup has been featured on my Instagram, I was pleased with Shutterfly's intuitive website and design process. I messed around with a couple of the tile layouts and was curious to see how they would print (would there be white spaces on an otherwise black background? would it show a "image missing error" in print?).
22 pages complete, I clicked "order" and spent the next 3 weeks waiting.
To note: I got an email from Shutterfly 12 hours later, saying my book was completed and had shipped out. But being a cheapskate, I had not paid for any sort of expedited shipping and my package was routed through UPS and then USPS. While I love my neighborhood mailman (I really do), the USPS held my package for processing just down the street from me for nearly 2 weeks. I couldn't pick it up, because it wasn't offically there yet, but it was there, you know? Grrr. I've ordered a few things online lately and the same thing happened with the USPS. So, EXPEDITED SHIPPING FOREVER!
Finished product? Awesome. The low resolution photos don't bother me at all; they're only noticeable if I look really carefully with a keen eye. The creative tiling patterns I did turned out great; missing tiles matched the pre-existing background. The paper quality was excellent, as was the printing and binding (I worked in printing for awhile, so I really do have an opinion).
Guess what everyone's getting for presents this year?
Note: Besides the unrelated free book, Shutterfly in no way sponsored this post. I wrote them a nice email congratulating them on their lovely product and they said "thanks" in return, but I have received no compensation from them. But maybe I will?...
