Geek Meets Chic: Get those pictures off your phone!

A few weeks ago I went to snap a random picture of my dinner or a sunset and my phone wouldn’t let me. See, I had maxed out the capacity in my photo stream… Looking back on my collection of hundreds of photo’s of food or my kids, I realized that while 1/2 of the photos could be deleted, many of them were photos I want to keep somewhere more secure than on my phone. So I went on the hunt to see the various creative options I had to make the most out of these memories.

Prints

My mom’s biggest complaint is that she never has a printed picture anymore. But let’s face it, in the time it takes to download our pictures onto our computer, then upload them to a photo printer’s site or print them yourselves, 500 other things have distracted you. That’s why I was really excited to try out the FreePrints app. Available for your iOS device (sorry, no Droid at this time) FreePrints lets you print up to 85 4×6 prints a month (1,000 a year!) FOR FREE – you just pay shipping.

The app is easy to use and allows you to pull images from your photo stream, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr or Picassa in seconds (ok, it may have taken a minute or two – but it was still WAY quicker than online sites!). If you want duplicates or additional sizes, those can be bought for a minimal fee. You do pay for shipping, but your fee will never be more than $9.99 no matter how many images you order – also you can pay with a CC or Paypal.

Posters

We all have a bazillion gorgeous pictures that we’ve taken with the Instagram app, but what can you do with these mini works of art besides leave them there in digital obscurity? A few months ago, while looking for ways to get my photos off Instagram and into IRL, I discovered the website Printstagram. This site not only pulls directly from Instagram to print images, but also mini-photo books and posters.

I pulled a bunch of non-people photos from my Instagram steam – food, buildings, cool pictures of our pets and random sightings – and made them into a 20×30 poster. It came out amazing. A grouping of random things from the past few months that made up important (or at least delicious) moments of my life. The products did take longer to come than usual, but I love my poster and the mini-books I ordered, so for me it was worth the wait.

Books

I love traditional photo albums and scrapbooks, but never find the time to put them together anymore. And when you get behind on photo albums, it’s like you will never catch up. But my eventual grandkids are not going to (or at least I don’t think they will!) sit around looking through my old hard drives for pictures of their parents as kids, and I can barely find older images anymore. So on my “resolutions” list for 2013 will be making a printed book a season. Since, as I said above, so much of my life is on Istagram, being able to download and create a full book will make it easier to follow through with.

Unlike the mini-books from Pinstagram, the Blurb books allow you to manipulate the content by editing the pages, adding backgrounds and borders and reordering the pictures. In addition to the Instagram books, at the Blurb site you can also make blog books, Facebook books, magazines, notebooks and personal planners!