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A Review: Easy Canvas Prints

Hey everyone! I was approached by the nice folks at easycanvasprints.com to create a custom canvas using their services and then do a review of my experience.

Here's a little more about the company. They specialize in creating canvases you can hang on your wall, either using your own photo and customizing a canvas to suit your tastes, or you can buy a ready made canvas from their gallery. Since I did the custom canvas, I'll be touching primarily on that.  

Ordering a canvas was easy and took only four steps using their website.  You can see the process on their Photo to Canvas page.

1 - Choose a canvas size. Canvas sized range in size from 8 x 8 inches all the way up to 24 x 36 inches, or one has the option of ordering a custom size where the height and width can be entered. I was also prompted to choose the thickness of the canvas, where a choice of 3/4 or 1 1/2 inches was given. I opted to go with the 1 1/2 inches.

2 - Upload the Photo You Wish to Use. I myself chose a picture of a beautiful hilltop village we visited in France a few years ago. A suggested size of 180 to 240 DPI is suggested for the best image quality.

3 - Choose a Border Style.  There are three border styles (or the way you want the edges to look) that can be chosen from. They can be seen on the Pricing Options page if you scroll down a bit. You can choose either image wrap, mirror wrap, or colored border wrap. I thought the colored border wrap would look best with the photo I had chosen, so I went that style. They have a color wheel slider that one can use to customize the border color. I chose a cream border to go around my canvas:


4 - Choose Color and Effects/Finalize your order. At This point, you can choose add on services, like color tinting and retouching. They cost extra, but may be worth it to you if you have a nice photo that needs flaws removed, a sephia tint, and so on. I didn't use these extras, and chose to simply double check the options I'd chosen, and then proceed to check out.

The whole ordering process took me about fifteen minutes, and I received an estimate of when the canvas would arrive and a receipt through an email that arrived just a few minutes later.

If you have more questions about Easy Prints Canvases, feel free to check out their FAQ Page.

Canvases take about two weeks to arrive by mail.  Mine came a little sooner than that, and here's how the wall hanging looked when I removed it from the package:


The box the canvas comes in is specially designed to protect the canvas as it's shipping, and as you can see, my canvas was wrapped tightly in plastic to protect it from getting dusty or soiled.  The canvas was at one point securely held down with the brown packing tape shown.  However, when I opened the box, I could see that two sides of the canvas had wiggled lose at some point.  I was glad to see that the canvas hadn't sustained any damage, though. 

Upon removing the wall hanging from the packaging, everything looked great.   The resolution of the photo on the canvas is nice, and the back of the canvas has hardware in place so that I can hang it on the wall of my choice.




So how would I rate my satisfaction with Easy Canvas Prints?  I would say very good. I was happy with the ease of the ordering process and was incredibly pleased with the canvas I received.  There was that very small problem with the shipping tape coming undone during transit, but the canvas still arrived safe and sound.  I would still recommend this service to others. 

I love the way the canvas looks and it's currently inhabiting a spot that used to be quite lonely in our master bath: 




The folks at Easy Canvas Prints would also like me to let you know about a great deal they have going.  If you "like" them on their Facebook Page, you can get 50% off your next canvas order and free shipping, too!  On their page, click the "50% off + Free Shipping" tab on the left side of their fan page, and you can get started from there. 


Thanks for reading my review and have a good day. 





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Do It Yourself Family Photo Shoot



I love this time of year for several reasons. One of those reasons is receiving the photos and Christmas/Holiday greetings from my friends and family. I really like to respond in kind by creating a photo card with a picture of our little brood. Above is the one I did up last year using a card template by Holly Brook Jones over at Two Peas.

The difficult part comes when we go to take our family picture. The first year we had the kids, we did the smart thing and had a photographer take photos.

Honestly, though, the last couple of years have been very challenging, and booking a sitting with a photographer didn't happen. Time, money, and sheer exhaustion got in the way, so we chose to do it ourselves.

I don't think this way is the most optimal. I would always recommend having someone else take your pictures, but this can work in a pinch. And sometimes, around the holidays, we may need a quick, no-fuss method for getting things done.

Here are some tips that worked for us in our makeshift photo shoot:

1. Choose coordinating outfits for family members.
We always choose colors that go together well instead of trying to have everyone wear something that's identical. Last year, as you can see from the card above, everyone wore jean jackets with white tees underneath. The other two years, I've gone down to Old Navy and got everyone cute holiday shirts that had similar colors.

2. Do a practice run with some of the poses.
This worked especially well for us since we have young kids. Here is a picture of my hubby showing our youngest boy how he wanted him to pose:



3. Decide where you will take the pictures.
We have taken ours in or around our house because we are generally pressed for time. Outdoor photos are my preference, but this year, the weather didn't cooperate on the day we planned to take them. Instead, we used the place in our house with the best light. We chose our staircase because of the light, it kept the kids fairly contained and they couldn't get too rowdy. The previous year, we took them outside on our patio.

4. Use a tripod.
This idea is probably an obvious one, but it bears repeating.



My hubby set ours up and tweaked the camera settings so that it would take pictures automatically on continual burst (where the camera takes several pictures in a row until you tell it not to). This allowed him to hit the button on the camera, then run over really fast and jump in with the rest of us.

5. Take a lot of pictures!
If you have squirmy kids or family members that have trouble keeping eyes opened, tongues in mouths, and so on, a lot of pictures to choose from will save your bacon. Using digital cameras makes it easy to decide what pictures to keep or delete. It's perfectly OK to delete the ones you don't like or need.

And let me be perfectly honest here --- there were many, many shots that looked like this or some variation of it:



It makes me laugh now to look at it now, but at the time I was pretty frustrated. As we looked through the hot mess of crazy pictures, we did find some in the set that were good. Here is the one we chose for our holiday card:



6. Use photo editing software to hide any flaws in your picture.
My husband and I laugh when we see this picture, because our oldest son (in the light blue shirt) is leaning forward slightly. Trace says Elijah is doing his "on the potty" stance in this picture. If we had someone else take the picture, then they could've told Elijah to sit up straight, but that's how it goes. We did the best with the time we had. So instead, I will use Photoshop Elements and some cute digital goodies to hide our picture taking sins. I found a fun holiday card template made by Michelle Coleman to plop the photo into.

With a little photo editing magic and Michelle's template, here is the finished card:



The cute white paper strips, the red patterned paper on the left, and tinting the photo to a sephia tone all make the things that bugged me about this photo less noticeable (of course, now all of you will see my son doing that goofy sitting stance forever more). I'm actually quite happy with how this turned out, even if this wasn't our first choice for taking the photos. My husband and I agreed that even though our youngest has a cheesy grin, it's pretty cute and shows his personality at his age.

7. Once the group family pictures are done, take some of individual family members.
While you still have everyone there and dressed nice, take advantage of it and get some good shots of them. This is one of my favorite things about family picture taking time, because the kids really like the one on one picture taking. And, Trace and I also snapped pictures of each other, since we are always behind the camera. Here are some of my favorite individual photos:













I hope you find these ideas helpful. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject of photography or family pictures, but I do know how to make things works when I'm short on time and energy. :)

Enjoy taking your holiday pictures and enjoy the best of the season.
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