Mother’s Day with Truprint #millionmumssmile

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Fiona Martin

Mother’s Day is the perfect time to spend time with family and of course spoil your mum. But what do you buy? There’s always the traditional flowers and chocolates but I think it’s nice to find something a bit different and possibly personalised. This is where Truprint could be the place you are looking for. Nowadays they do so much more than produce photographic prints, in fact there is quite an array of personalised gifts available that would be perfect for Mother’s Day this year.

For my mum, I will probably buy her some flowers but I like to give her a present too. It’s always hard to buy for her as she seems to have everything but then I spotted this personalised jigsaw which can be made from a photograph. I know she enjoys doing a jigsaw, so I decided to get a puzzle made up using a family photograph taken earlier this year. I think it is something that she will enjoy doing with the grandchildren and they will be fascinated that their images have been immortalised onto a jigsaw!

For myself I want something useful for Mother’s Day, a nice gift that doesn’t just sit there (I have enough clutter in my house!) so when I spotted this 13oz Photo Travel Mug I knew it’s something I’d like to receive as I need a new lidded mug for work and how lovely to be able to look at pictures of my children all day! I think receiving something practical is so much more acceptable these days especially when it’s personalised.

For children I think it’s appropriate to give just a small gift to their mummies, and something they can help design themselves and thats when I spotted these 3D Animated Bookmarks. With a vast choice of backgrounds to choose from and the ability to add two photos to each one that magically change when you tilt it, these are the perfect choice for children to give as gifts. My two designed one each with their own photos in and I can’t wait to receive them on Mother’s Day to use in my books.

Another simple idea is a keyring where you can simply choose an image to go inside. These are ideal to use as a small gift on their own, or to add to other gifts.

Why not take a look at the Truprint website yourself and see what you can find to give your mum this Mother’s Day?

Truprint also offer photo cards, so what a perfect opportunity to have one made up for your mum this Mother’s Day. This year Truprint are running a Mum in a Million campaign where they want to make a million mums smile by giving away 1 million personalised Mother’s Day cards.

To claim one of these cards just go to Truprint and enter MUMINAMILLION at the checkout.

T&C’s

Awards one free 7×5 folded card
Standard P&P charges apply (99p)
Ship to recipient not available
Complete with envelope
Code is One time use only
Strictly one code use per household.

I was provided with Truprint credit to write this post, all opinions are my own.

Personalised Book from Unique Editions

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Fiona Martin

Personalised story books are fascinating to most children, they are a novelty, something fun and a great keepsake. Unique Editions have pushed the boundary a little further than most personalised books I’ve come across and made the most awesome personalised story for a family I’ve ever seen.

I chose a book for my daughter Miss M, which included her family members, mummy, daddy and younger brother Mister B. This was the result:

The front cover itself sold it to me – how fabulous!! I was literally grinning to myself as I placed the order, a simple process where you add the names of each family member, along with a clear, front facing photo of each person to be included within the book.

When the book popped through our letterbox, I had the first viewing. I was beyond happy, a smile across my face as I read the book through, seeing the pictures on each page. I am very impressed, Miss M was the star of the book, but the rest of the family were featured on many pages and we were referred to under the surname of our family too which the children loved!

The book I chose was the story of a superhero family, one I knew both of my children would love being big superhero fans! It follows the story of mummy with her X-ray vision powers allowing her to see through walls so she knew who was sleeping at night *love my powers*. One day they were out shopping when mummy discovers some people robbing the bank, arghh!! But when our family change into our superhero outfits we manage to save the day!

It really is hard to show here how many giggles and how much excitement this book has brought. We have showed it to friends and family who’ve all enjoyed it and found it highly amusing as they read through the story seeing our faces on each page.

We LOVE this personalised childrens book from Unique Editions and think it would make the perfect gift for a young child. The books are available in several different stories, with just one child, or with an added sibling or even the whole family. The pages are of a great high colour quality and being quite thick will withstand little ones turning the pages. These really are books to be treasured and look back on in future years. I imagine we will have just as much fun reading it then as we do now!

If you are looking for a personalised book, then I highly recommend checking out Unique Editions – I promise you won’t be disappointed!

All reviews are my own and my family’s opinions and we received the book in order to write the review.

Personal Planner giveaway

Posted on December 4, 2013 by Fiona Martin

Everyone likes to keep a diary of some sort to try to organise their day to day lives. I normally have a small diary then end up with lots of bits of paper stuffed in it or separate notepads on the go. So when I discovered some gorgeous Personal Planners I was intrigued to find out more. They let you customise each element of the design from the picture on the front, to the page layout inside, even down to the colour of the ruler and elastic that holds it closed!

I have ordered a planner to review and can’t wait for it to arrive, a lovely size to keep all my dates, things I need to do and lists in. There are additional pages at the back which you can choose to have either as plain pages, colouring in pages, puzzles etc. The personalisation is great, so much more than just picking a front cover, it really lets you change each aspect to create a truly unique planner.

If you would like to win one of these lovely planners for yourself, the perfect way to organise your life for 2014, then enter my giveaway below. The winner will receive a code allowing them to choose and customise their own planner in any design of their choice.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Open to UK entrants only
Winners will be emailed and will need to reply within 5 days or a new winner will be drawn
Win competitions at ThePrizeFinder.com

Kids Capture the Colour – Children’s Photography #KIDSCTC

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Fiona Martin

Miss M was thrilled when she was sent a new camera to try out. It made her feel really grown up and her chunky old Vtech was passed down to Mister B who was thrilled to have a camera of his own.

With Miss M being a very independent, determined little five year old, she went ahead and took her pictures, but wouldn’t listen when I said don’t move the camera until the picture is taken. So she moved the camera immediately the second she released the shutter but I can honestly say the pictures below are her own work.

This is her entry for WHITE – a stingray in the local aquarium.

Unfortunately most other pictures from the aquarium were a bit blurred of if they were good didn’t really fit the colour brief. So when she ventured outside on the journey home she took plenty more pictures.

Miss M came across this blue building/shop and decided this would be her entry for BLUE.

Under a bench by some flower beds she saw this collection of leaves/debris and chose this to be her YELLOW picture. It had an old beer can in which she insisted on kicking to one side to ensure she captured just yellow.

For GREEN she found these bushes/shrubs.

And my favourite of her pictures is this RED flower that she came across.

I’m pleased Miss M took such an enthusiastic approach to photography. I just hope it continues and she’ll let me guide her in taking better pictures. I’m no expert but hope I can pass some hints and tips on to her for the future.

This is our entry into Travel Supermarkets Kid’s Capture the Colour #KIDSCTC

Turn Facebook photos into a picture poster with Posterfriend!

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Fiona Martin

For the last few years I have added many photographs to Facebook to share with friends and family. They often tend to be my better ones from days out, things we see and apart from sharing them at the time that I take them they tend to sit there in Facebook albums and I forget to look through them again.

Posterfriend, a new website has come up with the perfect solution to dust off those online pictures, bring them back to life in a form that you can view everyday! With Posterfriend you can create a customised poster with a varying amount of images, coloured backgrounds and even words along the bottom. The format is very simple, easy to use and photos are added straight from your Facebook albums.

I uploaded 35 photos from my Facebook albums to Posterfriend to make an A1 size poster. Each poster size allows a varying amount of pictures so you can customise it according to how many pictures you have or want to see on the poster. I decided to go with an “Out & About” theme and chose pictures of my children having fun outside on days out this year. I was able to add a title along the bottom and did this so that I could look back and remember when the pictures were taken. I also chose a light grey background from a rainbow of colours on offer. The one limitation is the square shaped images but I think this makes for a clean, modern feel and saves messing around with different orientated photos.

So our Posterfriend poster arrived within a few days, securely rolled up in a tube. When I first opened it I thought “Wow”! It really did look fabulous having lots of photos of my children all lined up together ready to put on the wall. What I was also impressed with was the quality of the paper, a thick paper with a slight sheen to it. This was definitely going to look good up on my wall. I have plans to buy a clip frame for it to keep it looking good for a long time but for now it is just sticky tacked to the wall.

I have had one visitor round already who stood and admired it and was quite surprised when I told them it was done with Facebook photos. I’m sure I’ll have many more!

If you fancy trying out Posterfriend for yourself then check out their Facebook page or find them on Twitter.

All reviews are my own and my family’s opinions. We are not paid for reviews although we do receive the product to try out and enable us to write the review.