Snapbox photo printing service - review

As you may have noticed, I love taking photos. I love to document my day. I carry a small Fuji Fine pix camera around with me all the time and I snap away, documenting and capturing what I do, as I do it. I use these images in so many ways - I obviously put them on here and on The Compost Bin  :-), I use them to illustrate talks and lecture notes; I refer to them to see what I was doing and when, I check back to see what "this time last year" looked like in the garden, and so on.

I don't pretend to be a particularly good photographer, but occasionally I do see an image I have captured and thought "ooh I like that - I wish I could have that as a print" but somehow I never get around to actually printing it off. I used to print off a lot of my shots in the good old days of film but since the advent of digital cameras I haven't done much printing.

I was recently contacted by SnapBox  an innovative digital photography service newly launched in the UK by established fine art printing company, JONDO. Snapbox very kindly offered me a free print in return for trying out the service.

Compostman has been refurbishing and redecorating the guest bedroom and it will (very soon!) become our room. We have a new colour scheme on the walls, a new floor, new blinds, a new flower bed to look out at, so what better way to brighten up one of the windowless walls than to put up a lovely print?

 

So, I went to the website, uploaded my chosen image from my computer, cropped it until I liked what I saw, picked a size and then put it in my basket. During the process you get to see what the print looks like, in the frame, against a wall. A few more key strokes and lo, I had purchased a print to hang on the wall. 

The whole process took me less than 10 mins from start to finish and was much like loading images onto Blogger (only faster!) 

Apparently you can also upload a photo from your mobile device, or select one from your Facebook albums. Alternatively you can email an image from your device to Snapbox.

 I was most impressed that the print arrived the NEXT DAY! I ordered it at 11 am and it arrived the next day by courier at 2 pm. What about that! The parcel came well wrapped up in recyclable stuff - I will be adding the cardboard to the compost bins.

 

And this is what I chose - it is one of the Bumblebee images I took from the Centaurea next to the polytunnel door.I am so pleased with this print - it looks just like I wanted it to and the image quality is excellent.

At the moment it is standing on my dresser in our bedroom, waiting for me to get round to hanging it on the wall.

Disclaimer -This post mentions a company who sent me a voucher for a free print, in return for me trialling the website and going through the ordering process. It originally appeared ( in an expanded form) on The Compost Bin. As always, the words I write are my own and are my honest opinions.

Propagating...something like, but not, an artichoke

These are some sort of perennial sunflower I think ( if anyone knows what they are please tell me!) They are vaguely Jerusalem artichoke like in flower and habit. But are not those.














They are really lovely and make a great cut flower, but unfortunately the area they  infest grow in is overcome with bindweed and is also going to be where the new greenhouse is sited.

So today I have been taking lots of rhizomes up, pulling off the bindweed and planting the rhizome ( sans bindweed, I hope!) into pots .

These will be planted out next year - I will over winter them in the poly tunnel. ( oh poly tunnel how I adore thee - you make my dreams come true!)

I have lots of PLANS involving lots of herbaceous perennials for next year. ...told you it was a mistake to let me go to RHS shows!

Bumblebee print for our new bedroom wall :)

 Remember the SnapBox review I posted about last week? Well I was most impressed that the print arrived the NEXT DAY! I ordered it at 11 am and it arrived the next day by courier at 2 pm. What about that!

The parcel came well wrapped up in recyclable stuff - I will be adding this cardboard to the compost bins.

The print itself was well cushioned on a separate card.

And this is what I chose - it is one of the Bumblebee images I took from the Centaurea next to the polytunnel door.

I am so pleased with this print - it looks just like I wanted it to and  the image quality is excellent.

I shall be putting it up in our newly finished bedroom, which we MOVED INTO TODAY! YAY!

A before and after post is being put together, but for now I am just so happy to be in a lovely, clean, decorated, pretty room.

With a lovely SnapBox print on the wall :)

A very clean thumbs up to Ecover.

Just before Hampton Court Flower Show I was sent a sample of an Ecover gardening pack which contained Washing Up liquid, Biodegradable compost caddy bags and some Heavy Duty Hand Cleaner: 


I had a lot going on that week and someone put the items away for me and to be honest I forgot all about it until today, when I opened a cupboard and spotted the items looking at me

One of my regular weekend jobs is to empty out and clean the compost caddy  - we get through a lot of veg here and all the compostables go into this handy caddy we keep in the corner of the kitchen by the sink.

But it was rather smelly and full to overflowing  - we had started on a second container, there was no room for any more in the caddy!

So I decided to use my Ecover freebies to sort out the mess.

I emptied out the contents of the caddy into the Can O Worms and the Hungry Bin wormeries, which are going strong and are full of worms making lots of lovely vermicompost for me:)

and then gave the caddy a good scrub out with my Pomegranate and Lime washing up liquid and hot water - it smelt lovely after I had done.

I usually use the Co Op compostable shopping bags to line the caddy, but these Ecover ones are really good and very strong. I suspect I will get a number of uses from each liner.

Caddy clean and back in place.

After I had finished I needed to wash my hands and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them clean looking. When I looked at them closely I could see that all those new potatoes, broad beans and tomatoes we are gathering from the garden have left my fingers stained yellow and black.

 

Now the Ecover hand cleaner scrub contains crushed coconut shells so I gave my fingers a scrub with it  and lo, they are now nice and clean and soft again :) I gave my hands  a treat of some rose and lavender hand cream to follow and tidied up my nails as well. No more rough skin snagging on my crochet wool now :).

Seriously, the Ecover compost bags are really really good and strong and a good size, the Hand scrubber really does work and the Washing up liquid does what it is supposed to and smells divine.

Yet again, thank you Ecover UK for sending me the items to try out; they get a (very clean!) thumbs up from me :)

Big Butterfly Count 1st August 2013

Today I did another of my 15 minute counts for the  Big Butterfly Count
I have already done three elsewhere in the wood and meadow but today I counted in the garden.

From the website

The big butterfly count is a nationwide survey aimed at helping us assess the health of our environment. It was launched in 2010 and has rapidly become the world's biggest survey of butterflies. Almost 27,000 people took part in 2012, counting 223,000 individual butterflies and day-flying moths across the UK

 
Butterflies react very quickly to change in their environment which makes them excellent biodiversity indicators. Butterfly declines are an early warning for other wildlife losses.
That’s why counting butterflies can be described as taking the pulse of nature.

The count will also assist us in identifying trends in species that will help us plan how to protect butterflies from extinction, as well as understand the effect of climate change on wildlife.

How to take part

Simply count butterflies for 15 minutes during bright (preferably sunny) weather during the big butterfly count. We have chosen this time of year because most butterflies are at the adult stage of their life cycle, so more likely to be seen. Records are welcome from anywhere: from parks, school grounds and gardens, to fields and forests.

If you are counting from a fixed position in your garden, count the maximum number of each species that you can see at a single time. For example, if you see three Red Admirals together on a buddleia bush then record it as 3, but if you only see one at a time then record it as 1 (even if you saw one on several occasions) – this is so that you don’t count the same butterfly more than once . If you are doing your count on a walk, then simply total up the number of each butterfly species that you see during the 15 minutes.

I did today's count  on  the butterfly/bee bed under the washing line. It is a strip about 6 feet long and 2 foot wide crammed with oregano, mint and borage plants.

 

I lay on the grass ( so as to take better pictures) and in 15 minutes I saw (at one glance)

Large Cabbage White 8
Small Cabbage White 9
Comma 5
Peacock 3
Small Tortoiseshell 4
Red Admiral 2


 and I saw 22 of these little beauties all at once! They are Gatekeeper butterflies

and I saw so many bumblebees!
 

The oregano, mint  and borage flowers were humming with them. I cannot describe adequately the scent and the sound of so many bees humming away in the sunshine on the warmed herb flowers.

I am truly blessed to live here and see these sights.

Anyone else joining in with this? What have you seen?