polabora instagram prints

as you may have noticed by now, I am a little bit obsessed with Instagram. I love documenting little snippets of my life on there, and am now trying to make more of a conscious effort to print out as many of my photos from there as possible. there are SO many sites now offering easy and super cute ways to print pictures straight from your Instagram account, and I'm trying as many as possible it seems! today I want to share with you my latest find - a very new company called Polabora. they offer two super adorable ways to print your pictures, the first being as little retro polaroid style prints... they are a dinky size, perfect for pinning around your room, using as tags on presents, popping in with a notecard - so many possibilities!

 the second option is the photobooth-style photo strips. I think I might have fallen a bit in love with these. I have them EVERYWHERE! on the fridge, using as a bookmark, stuck on the wall in my studio, next to my bed. the image quality is really good, especially considering all my pictures were taken on my iphone, and I like the paper they are printed on (like a glossy photo paper - I don't like photo prints to be on thick paper, but maybe that's just me!)

Polabora prints are already pretty darn reasonable (about £9 for a set of 20 polaroid style prints!), however they have oh so kindly offered all you lovely Ladybird Likes readers a special discount code! simply enter the code LADYBIRD when you check out and you will receive a whopping 20% off your order! just be warned - it will expire two weeks from today (so on the 14th April!) so go use it now! it's the perfect excuse to get some of those pictures printed out....

instagram photo calendar

before Christmas I was on Groupon (any other Groupon addicts out there?!) and noticed they had an offer on personalised photo calendars made with your instagram photos. I love giving personalised presents, so I bought some to give as gifts and also one for myself, which I filled with some of my favourite instagram pictures to look at while I'm working. although I think the Groupon offer is no longer running, the calendar was actually ordered from Instajunction.

the quality of the images isn't amazing - I don't think they are meant to be made as large as they are on the calendar, so the images looked a bit grainy and had an odd colour cast to them. but that said, I don't really mind, I just like the novelty of having my photos (which would otherwise be stuck on my phone) made into a calendar that I can use!

shake it like a polaroid picture

 when I was younger I carried a film camera with me everywhere I went, and although I loved taking photos, I think I loved putting the printed photos into albums and scrapbooks even more. now that everything is digital, I never print off photos. even though I shoot a lot of film, I just get the negatives developed and put straight on to a CD to put on my computer. the last time I had photos printed was for my final portfolio at university!

now don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE technology, and being able to snap a photo on my iphone whenever I feel like it, and then share it with the world via instagram. but I do miss having photos to hold in my hand, and stick on my walls. I'd seen a few sites offering services to print your instagram photos and send them to you, but they all seemed to be based in the US, and I didn't want to pay international shipping and then risk getting stung for tax and import duty on top of that. so when I discovered printed.com have just started doing printed instagram photos I obviously HAD to order some!

 I ordered 36 prints, and it was SO easy - it links to your instagram account so you just highlight the photos you want printed and you're done! the fact that they print them to look like retro polaroid photos just makes them even more awesome in my opinion!

 the prints took about 3 days to arrive, which is good because I am the most impatient person EVER. and the quality is really good - the front is gloss laminated so the colours on the pictures look really bright, but the back isn't so you can write on it.

I'm already planning on ordering more of these as I can think of a million uses for them! how about printing a bundle off as a gift (I'm going to print off lots of ones of Jasper for my Mum), or using them as notecards, or even printing off ones of your handmade products to use as promotional material in with online orders?

(also, this post was not sponsored in any way, I just thought there might be other people like me who want to print off their instagram photos but hadn't heard of printed.com)