After every big holiday or life event I experience, I tend to create a few pages in my scrapbook about them. For example, last year I worked in Walt Disney World so spent a good few pages of my A6 scrapbook pasting photos, diary entries and other memorable pieces I collected to help me remember this incredible experience. I think there is something a little nicer about making a scrapbook for memories rather than just a standard photo album. I'm a bit sentimental with certain things so I like to keep the tags and receipts from shops I've never been to before and other bits and pieces like tickets and passes - but what do you do with them when they're home?! I love a scrapbook as you can stick all of these things in one place and build a story about where you've been, it's very textured and fun to look at in the future.
It's also great to add photos to help tell the story of whatever event is in the scrapbook. Previously, I'd just used my home printer to print a few, or had a few sent away for. This holiday I've just been on to San Francisco, Yosemite, Las Vegas and New York, I've been much more active on Instagram and think I've become better at taking those spontaneous, Insta-worthy snaps. So standard prints just didn't cut it! That's when I came across these gorgeous vintage inspired Polaroid snaps from PhotoBox! I've actually been looking for this style of print for years and finally more companies are starting to offer them at reasonable prices. I managed to order 40 Polaroid prints for £11.49 including delivery and this was with a discount (PhotoBox, Truprint etc always have some sort of offer on).
I'm a regular user of PhotoBox for standard prints and I like using their photo book building service for gifts as I think it is the easiest builder around. It was simple and easy to upload the images I wanted to turn into retro prints and you even have the option to add filters (even though I don't think they were very good, I edited mine on the apps I have on my phone) and crop/rotate etc. You can type a caption under the photo if you wish but I opted not to do this as I thought handwriting this would give a more authentic look.
The prints arrived a bout 5 days after ordering and so cutely packaged! The packaging is good enough to keep the prints in if you're not looking to stick them anywhere. The prints aren't as glossy as regular prints, they have a slight matt finish which is quite nice. They come printed on card which makes them stronger than regular prints which is good considering they are more expensive than regular prints. I don't think the prints are as high quality as the standard ones but they are still absolutely fine. Overall I am really impressed with them, I just think they are absolutely adorable and will look perfect in my scrap book!
PhotoBox / Retro Prints / From £0.30 per print
