Review of the Selphy 910

Way back in June when I got my Selphy for my birthday, I said I would do a review. Well, finally, here it is! And I have to say, I love my Selphy!

The printer comes with a power adapter and tray for the ‘postcard’ sized paper to go into. However, there is no ink or paper (not even a sample amount) included in the box, so you do need to buy this at the same time. There are a couple of sizes of paper, but I chose the ‘postcard’ size, which is actually 6x4.

The ‘ink’ is actually on a roll, like film. It slots into the side of the printer very easily. The paper comes in separate packs and you load 18 sheets max (which is one pack) into the holder and then slot that into the printer.

You need space at the back of the printer for the paper to come almost all the way out before it is pulled back in again. The paper goes through the printer four times – three times a different colour is laid down and on the fourth pass a waterproof coating. The quality of the finished photos is very good. You do need to tear off the top and bottom perforated edges, but this barely shows on the photo edge and if you were bother by a slightly perforated edge you could trim it carefully either with a trimmer or craft knife.

It was stupidly easy to set it up to print from my iPad and iPhone. The first thing I had to do was to download the App from the iStore. Once you have that on your iPad/iPhone it is time to connect it to the printer. This literally took about 3 minutes to do for each device.

It is then a case of opening the App, choosing the photo you want to print from within the App and pressing the print button! The photo is printed in about 2 minutes.

I f you want to have more than one photo printed on one sheet of 4x6 then you just use an App like Photocollage to create your multiphoto, save it to your camera roll (making sure that the ratio is 2:3) and then print it! Easy!

I also tried printing from my camera’s SD card – push the card in and all your photos can be seen on the printer screen. Pressing the little button with a magnifying glass and minus sign means you can see 9 photos at a time and scroll through them more quickly. From the little screen you have a menu and you can choose how many photos you want to print on your page. Once you have chosen that, then you just need to chose the photos to print and press the print button!

Would you like a quick demo?

OK then, here it is! Me printing from my iPhone.

So, do I recommend this? Definitely! I can see me using this a lot to print photos out when I am working in the conservatory, rather than having to keep going back into the lounge where the main computer and printer are. The quality is superb and I understand that the waterproof coating means the photos are guaranteed to last 100 years – by which time I won’t be here anymore and won’t worry if you can’t see them!

Is it costly? Well the printer was £80.99, which is comparable with many photo quality printers. The box of paper and ink, which prints 100 photos was £23.45, making the cost of each print, (not including the cost of the printer) 23p, which I don’t think is too expensive. I obviously wouldn’t print a whole holiday’s worth of photos this way, but to be able to print them off to go to a crop, or whilst doing Project Life, it is really good value and very good quality.

Happy post

Back at the beginning of winter, last year (!), I entered a blog giveaway on Jennifer's Jumbles during her Frosty Festivities Blog Event. As the giveaway ended I had not won, but didn't mind as I had enjoyed reading all the posts in the Event and taking part in some of the challenges that Jennifer posted.

However, last week I got an email from Jennifer. The original winner had not contacted her and so she had drawn a second winner and it was me! I was thrilled and last week I received this lovely package direct from S J Crafts:

I had often wondered exactly what was in one of these collection packs and so here it is, all opened up for you to see too!

For some reason this won't play properly on first clicking play! If you then pause, pull the little circle on the bar at the bottom back to the beginning and press play again the green screen goes away and you get the video - well, I hope you do anyway! If you don't, please let me know and I'll see if I can fix it!

I really enjoy reading Jennifer's blog and she has recently moved to a new address and you can find her here: Jennifer Grace Creates. Do hop on over and take a look. She is planning a new Blog Event for May, which I am really looking forward to!

So, a big thank you to both Jennifer and SJ Crafts for a wonderful prize!

Viva Las Vegas!

Well, what other title could I use for our only full day in Vegas?!

We started our day with breakfast in the food court of the hotel – cheap and cheerful, but very tasty! We then took the free mono rail from our hotel to the Bellagio – saved quite a bit of walking, which we appreciated by the end of the day!

The Bellagio – well, what can I say? I had been looking forward to seeing the Conservatory there ever since I had seen Gail’s photos from her visits. I was not disappointed! The display was fantastic.

 The ceiling in reception was to be seen to be believed too!

We ambled through the Bellagio and then out to Caesars Palace. What I couldn’t get over was how the hotels are actually resorts – they are HUGE. You just walk in and out and basically go where you like! They have huge shopping malls and then there are the casinos and the restaurants – unbelievable really.

In Caesars Palace we had a nice amble through the shopping mall area, enjoying the scenery and the ceiling painted to look as if you are outside!

There is an animated statue show, but unfortunately we were an hour too early to see it, but we did take some photos of the fish in the aquarium that surrounded the statues!

Finishing at Caesars, we braved the heat outside and walked across the road to the Venetian. Wow! St Mark’s Square, canals and gondolas, all on the first floor – the strength of these buildings must be immense!

I bought a beautiful Morano glass necklace from one of the shops there with some birthday spending money that the girls at work had given me. Took me ages to decide which one to buy – they were all so lovely!

Hugh liked this spiral escalator.

We then walked back towards our hotel, outside! It was so hot and so crowded! We detoured off into the Casino Royale – not to bet, but to go to the food court at the back for a nice cool drink! Having cooled down – so much actually that I got goose bumps – we walked back to and through the Bellagio to get the mono rail back to our hotel.

And we saw this!

How we had managed to miss her on our first trip I don’t know – she was beautiful, as were the cakes here too!

Arriving back at the hotel we bought a snack and took it up to our room to eat for lunch and to rest our weary legs. Hugh actually fell asleep for an hour! When he woke we decided to go down to the pool for a swim. No photos here I’m afraid – we didn’t want to take the camera down to the pool area as it was so crowded and we wouldn’t have wanted to leave it with our towels whilst we swam. However, here is the view of the pool from our room!

Having refreshed ourselves and got dressed again, we set out to explore the other end of the ‘Strip’. A walk down to New York New York

And then a ride on the other free mono rail to the Luxor. I had to visit here as Brenda, my work colleague had stayed here earlier in the year and I wanted to prove to her that I had been to her hotel!

Having spent a short while here we made our way back up the Strip again, stopping at M&M World for a look around and then to see the M&M 3D Movie – 10 minutes long, but quite good fun! We bought ourselves some M&M’s, but from Walgreens where they were cheaper!

We had our evening meal in the Monte Carlo Buffet – no photos because I was too busy eating! It was really nice! We then got back on the mono rail to the Bellagio again and went to see the fountain show – again recommended by Gail. Gail – you were right – it was wonderful!

And if you want to see a short video of the fountains, here it is!

We watched the show once, taking photos and then, because we had enjoyed it so much, we walked round to the front of the hotel and watched it again, not taking photos this time, but taking it all in. The music was different each time, which was nice as it meant that the fountain display was different each time too.

By this time our energy was completely flagging! The ‘Strip’ doesn’t look that long on a map, but as everyone will tell you, when you try to walk it, which we did, you end up walking miles!! We made our way back to the hotel and gladly collapsed into bed. Our last night in Vegas. We needed to be up early the next morning for our journey to the Grand Canyon.

Angry Birds - The Movie!

So, here it is, Ben destroying his cake. Well, actually he doesn't really destroy it! But he had great fun, which was the main aim of the whole thing! And the cake itself tasted delicious, even if I say so myself!

 
Hope you enjoyed that and thanks for looking!

4x6 Photo Love - July 2011

Shimelle's layout this month was just perfect to showcase 7 of the photos we took at Lindisfarne in June. I am slowly working my way through these photos! I intend to do one page for each day we were there, to give a flavour of the holiday.

So, you can only see two photos! Yes, and I said it showcased seven. That is because the others are on a concertina fold pull out. The best way to show this is on the video below:

And here is a close up of the journalling:

It just so happened that the only 4x6 journalling card I had was exactly the same as the one Shimelle used!

I am really enjoying this series from Shimelle - next month will be eight photos, how is she going to manage that I wonder?

SisterAct?

Well, it is a bit shaky (the person doing the recording I think was laughing!), but here is the video of 'My God' from Sister Act, as sung by the guys from Leisure Link Golf, and the ladies from HR and Despatch of AllClear Insurance. I will post some photos tomorrow. Enjoy!