Digital Home Thoughts: The Scrapblog Printing Test: Great Results!

Now that Mother's Day is over, I can publish this article without fear of ruining the surprise. As you can see by the photo above, I created a customized Mother's Day card for my mom, and I used the Scrapblog service to do it. They had a special promotion on creating a free Mother's Day card, but unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to figure how to get the card for free. I poked around looking for what I had to do to get this free card, and failed. But hey, the cards were only $1 each, so no big loss (I ordered two). At the time, Scrapblog wasn't shipping outside the USA (they now ship to Canada), so I had to have it shipped to a friend of mine, who then shipped it to me. The final cost of the one card for my mom? About $25 USD. That's an expensive card, but I was so happy with how great the card looked on my screen after I designed it I knew I had to order it for her.

Designing the card was incredibly simple - Scrapblog has an assortment of professionally-designed templates, and once you find a template you like, it's simply a matter of uploading your photos and arranging things the way you like. Oh, and did I mention this is all accomplished inside your browser via a sophisticated and very fast Flash-based application? Here's what it looks like in action - everything was fast and fluid, and the only time I was waiting for anything was when I was uploading the photos I wanted to use in the card. Scrapblog's developers did a fantastic job making the Flash-based application fast and easy to use. It's not quite as powerful as FotoFusion from Lumapix, but it's a heck of a lot easier to use - and that's important. I hope they're working on an Adobe Air version for some out-of-browser action.

So how did the product turn out in the end? Extremely well - the card stock on the card was very high-quality, and the print quality was superb. You'd swear it was a card you bought at a Hallmark store and not something you had custom made. With the right kind of printer and paper, you can print your own greeting cards at home - but they'll look home made. Scrapblog leverages top-tier printing output to give you access to a product that looks just as good as any commercial card. Scrapblog doesn't just do cards - you can also order books and calendars. Their book offering includes 12" x 8", 9" x 6", and 6" x 4" sizes.

And, yes, my mom loved the card - it's a unique treasure for her now to keep.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He likes scrap-booking type stuff more than his wife does - is that weird?

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