I used to be a scrapbooking maniac. I compiled, cropped, and journaled thousands of photos into big, bulky photo albums. After I started taking digital pictures and blogging, I found myself doing less and less scrapbooking. I started just using my photos for blog posts and occasionally printing them out when my mom whined loud enough about never getting to see her grandson growing up. Other than that, my photos are just hanging out on my harddrive.
Yesterday, my friends at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog invited me to an event sponsored by HP at a nearby Long's Drugstore to make a photo poster. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, but Techmama's very brave husband offered free babysitting for my son and her three boys, so we ventured over together. I had uploaded some of my favorite photos of our trip to Greenland last year onto a flash drive, and thought I would make something for Alex's room. They offered us a free poster for mombloggers and friends, so I had nothing to lose. Plus, I needed some shampoo, so going to the drugstore was on my list of errands for the day anyway.
We were greeted by a number of friendly reps from HP, who were standing by a photo machine kiosk, ready to help us turn our pictures into a 16x20 poster. Beth went first, and it took her about 10 minutes to load in the pictures, choose a background color, and shuffle her photos into a pattern that she liked. It took another 15 minutes or so to print out, and the quality was pretty amazing. The photo collage was printed out on heavy, photo-quality paper with a matte finish and looked very professional.
I had a little technical difficulty with mine, because the Sandisk flashdrive I won from Socal Mom's giveaway last week was new and contained some kind of software that the machine couldn't read. They ended up making a CD for me on another machine, and when that didn't work, they loaded my pictures onto another flashdrive and we were good to go. They HP reps said this glitch will be fixed with a software upgrade soon, and that the machines should be able to read any of the newer flashdrives in the future. For now, it's best to take in a CD, an older flashdrive, or any memory card from your camera to make a poster.
After we got the pictures uploaded, the touchscreen led me through a series of easy steps of choosing photos, cropping them, choosing a color background, and then a series of "shuffles" that put the pictures in various places in a collage format. You can't choose the exact placement of your photos, which is either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. I could imaging myself spending hours standing in front of the machine, changing sizes, moving pictures around, and not being able to decide how to format the thing. With the shuffle, the software makes the decisions for you, and you can hit the shuffle button as long as you want to, until you get the right configuration. I think I went through about a dozen different variations before I hit on two or three I really liked.
I loved how easy it was to use the machine, and the quality of the end product. I ended up buying a frame and hanging it in the living room, instead of pinning it up in Alex's room as I had planned. I could definitely see making something like this for a teacher gift, a grandparent gift, or to commemorate a very special event. The machine also makes lovely calendars, photobooks, and greeting cards. To find a location of one of the HP photo machines near you, click here.
Now, I'm wondering what I'm going to do with all that scrapbooking equipment I have stored in the closet...
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