SUMMER OFFER - FREE photo mousemat with all orders over £50

That's right!

We're giving away a FREE personalised mousemat with all orders over £50 at Fabulous Photo Gifts.

No catches or hidden gimmicks - just spend £50 or more in a single order at Fabulous Photo Gifts, email us your preferred photo for your FREE mousemat and we'll get on with it straightaway.

It's our little way of helping make the Summer sizzle! (and helping you get an extra free pressie' into the bargain).

Click here to see an example of our superb quality, fabric personalised photo mousemats.

Limited period Offer - WOW colour change mugs now also in red or blue

For a limited period only, you can now order one of our personalised photo colour changing 'WOW' mugs in red or blue.

Same price - same great quality as our regular black personalised WOW mug.

For more details or to order and personalise one online today - click here

Bruce Hornsby and the Range - when a song reminds you of a holiday

Perhaps it's the rain that's had the Fabulous Photo Gifts workshop thinking of holidays, or more likely it's all the wonderful holiday photographs we've been receiving from you to personalise everything from jigsaws to our new photo engraved crystals.

All that sand, sea and fun - no wonder we're so happy in our work.

Which leads me onto a discussion we had the other day about tunes that remind you of a particular holiday. Two, well three tunes stick out in my mind.

The first would be Lucille (you picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel as we used to sing) playing non-stop on the caravan campsite pub every evening.

The second would be Tenpole Tudor's Wunderbar which played heavily as we left for a week's Scout camp.

The third is Bruce Hornsby and the Range's 'The way it is'. At the time, I was travelling with a mate from work for a weeks camping in Devon. We kept hearing this song but never heard who it was by - how very annoying. At the time I remember we thought it sounded a bit John Cougar Mellencamp' ish.

The camp was a bit of a washout and we ended up in a very comfy B&B for most of the week - serious strain on our beer money i can tell you!

Anyway back to Bruce Hornsby.... sometime later, a group of us started up our own little record club - the 5 of us would each pay a £1 a week, and every week, we each got a turn at buying an album (we're talking vinyl LP for around £5.50 - early '80's). You then passed it around the other 4 members and if they liked it, they taped it (or not as the case may be - most of us went out and bought the album ourselves anyway) I remember we enjoyed Paul Simon's Graceland, Berlin's Count Three and Pray, Genesis Invisible Touch to name but a few.

So when my turn to spend the fiver came up, of course I rushed out and bought the Bruce Hornsby LP. It's still about somewhere although the equipment to play it on has long since bit the dust.

Oh well it's my birthday (very soon) so perhaps I'll have to treat myself off of iTunes???

In the meantime, catch up with some of the songs mentioned above on our daily fantasy iPod playlist over on our Tumblr account - http://fabulousphotogifts.tumblr.com/

Another great support act - Tumblr

You may have read some time ago that we were running our own daily fantasy iPod playlist over on our Tumblr account.

Tumblr is a great place to build an easily indexable collection of blog posts, web site favourites, music and video, pictures etc. and share your collection with everyone else.

There are also some great nifty tools making it easy to share content on your Tumblr account.

I have Stuart Sharpe to thank for first bringing it to my attention. It's a great sharing platform.

However, the other day, I kept getting an error message when trying to upload a new link. I was patient, tried a few more times but kept getting a 'report to Tumblr' message so I did exactly that - reported the fault.

Well I don't know what time it was where they were but they were soon back with an email and a further email saying that they were looking into. In the meantime, I replied that the problem had either cleared itself through their intervention or of its own accord, either way - thank you.

Here's the message I received back:

"Hi, Jonathan. It must have been of its own accord. Regardless, I'm glad this issue is resolved. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with and thanks for using Tumblr! Marc :-)"

Pleasure doing business with you boys.

You'll find an equal, if not greater attention to customer care right here at Fabulous Photo Gifts - it's so nice to know we're not the only ones put a human face to a sometimes faceless web.

Where did you get that hat? Using photographs to illustrate your blog posts

A picture paints a thousand words - that's what they say.

Here at Fabulous Photo Gifts , we're used to dealing with all manner of photographs - family portraits, outings, holidays, pets, weddings etc as we personalise your gift choices and despatch them asap.

You'll have probably noticed that on our blog, we like to highlight certain posts with an illustration or two. We love photography!

The photos and images we use on our Blog generally fall into 3 categories:

Product pictures - our own photographs of actual examples of our range of photo gifts, many featuring our own family and friends. If you've visited our website, you'll see that we use plenty of large pictures to show customers exactly what they're ordering.

Own photography - When we're not busy in the Fab' Photo Gifts workshop, we like to go out and take beautiful pictures of our own, many of which are held on various stock image libraries for purchase. Some even make it into publications and point of sale materials used by publishers and companies the world over. (see more at http://www.purple13.co.uk - digital photo art of Fabulous Photo Gifts proprietor Mandy Collins).

Stock photography - sometimes something a little more abstract is preferred and for that, we turn to Flickr common licence photography, where very often, little more than accrediting the photographer and linking to the image on Flickr is all that's required - like the photo above.

Stock photography allows you to draw from a wider pool of images than you may have available to yourself. It also gives you the opportunity to spice up your posts with a well chosen 'caption' photograph. See the difference using a few images to illustrate your blog posts can make.

I don't illustrate every post, it's not always necessary. I'm also mindful of page load times when there are loads of large images etc. Tread carefully, size to fit, reduce colour levels / dpi / quality etc and you'll be fine.

Go on! Go illustrate!

photo credit: thunderbirdchild5

Amazing what you can learn from Twitter in just a few hours

What i learned from Twitter in just one day...

It was raining hard enough to stop @Julie_K from hoeing her allotment

The Shuttle launch was delayed for a 5th time from @nasa

A few friends were organising a drink in London @maxamphoto

There was a clever iPhone app for the 3GS video @Elke

Mayor of London Boris Johnson (@MayorOfLondon) keeps a 6ft chicken in his back garden @thedailymash

A 3.2 magnitude Earthquake shook LA Airport @gaynorlove

@RNLIrescues - the new Portaferry lifeboat made two rescue calls on its first day

@stuartsharpe wondered what was the greater achievement - Apollo 11 or Apollo 13?

Meanwhile, PR consultant @emilyrobe took the 'Which classic hollywood actress are you?' test and got Marilyn Monroe.

@tdrury had a close encounter with painters in his office re-painting their stairs bannisters.

@ApolloPlus40 (tweeting events as they happened 40 years ago in the run up to the Apollo misson) Survey says 51% of Americans favor manned lunar landing to 41 against - change from 49 for, 39 against in February.

All good stuff eh? To follow Fabulous Photo Gifts on Twitter - click here.

photo credit: foundphotos

Photo Coaster confusion

Coaster confusion

After the Spring launch of our new look photo gift personalisation area (which coincided with a general site make-over and some new personalised gift options) we've been delighted to continue receiving your feedback and as such have just made some slight changes to our personalised photo coasters product page.

Previously, it was only possible to personalise a set of coasters with one photograph, however the new upload process does actually allow subsequent uploads, merely overwriting the previous photograph you'd uploaded until you click on 'confirm details'.

We've had a couple of instances where customers mistakenly thought they were ordering a set of coasters each with a different picture. Our apologies for any confusion.

Our sets of 4 coasters are supplied with the same photograph on all 4 coasters.

If you wanted another photograph on the coasters, please contact us PRIOR to ordering online as we may be able to help - subject to how busy we are.

Fabulous Photo Gifts.

How do we measure blog post failure?

How do we measure blog post failure?

Did your blog post fail because it failed to attract any comments? Did it fail to attract any views (from tracking stats)? or did it fail to satisfy on a personal level ("I was really happy with that post")?

Did it get shared on any number of social websites? Did it get re-tweeted? Did it get linked to by another blogger? Did you make it easy to share by publicising it?

Was it used to illustrate a point? Did it offer a solution to a problem? Did it offer advice or a personal perspective?

Did you scare your regular readers by being too far off your normal topic?

Did you try to engage readers when finishing the post by posing a question? Did it end on a 'take it or leave it' note? Did it encourage anyone to read another earlier post you've written or direct them to another Blogger's article?

Was it to long to keep the attention of the reader? Was it too short to be of interest? Did it do everything to 'stake its claim' to the web 'real estate' it was taking up?

Answer truthfully - do you still think your post was a failure?

“The only real failure in life is the failure to try.”

Feel free to share your experiences of thoughts here.

From July 2008 archives - mighty mouse stops scrolling

Back in July last year, we wrote how our Apple Mac experience was cut short when the wireless might mouse stopped scrolling.

In case you missed it or you've been recently affected, here's how we solved it:

http://purple13.blogspot.com/2008/07/mighty-mouse-stops-scrolling-scrolling.html

Keep scrolling!

P.S If you need a nice personalised photo mousemat to put your mouse on, then check out our photo mousemats.

Photo Gifts - how do you do that?

Fabulous Photo Gifts isn't the 'fast-food' of personalised gifts - we tend to leave that stuff to others.

When someone buys a personalised gift from us, we want that gift to last. Quite frankly, there's nothing worse than a mug where the 'transfer' starts rubbing off after a couple of uses is there?

So much of our personalised gifts - wooden jigsaws, mugs, mousemats, placemats, t-shirts, chopping boards, clocks and photo blocks are printed using a process known as dye-sublimation printing.

What's that? Dye-sublimation?

In a nutshell, your photo is optimised for printing, scaled etc for the gift you've chosen and then printed using these special dye-sublimation inks onto a special transferring medium.

The printed sheet is then placed over the item to be personalised and pressed in a special heat press at incredibly high temperatures- for some items as along as 15 minutes.

The press is then lifted and the very hot item removed. Some items like jigsaws and placemats require pressing until cool before they can be packed.

Why use this dye-sublimation method?

Ready for the science bit? Dye sublimation uses special inks that when heated, convert the ink to a gas - this gas 'fires' itself onto the item to be printed, impregnating the special receptive coating previously applied to the blank.

So you get very vibrant colours and a print that will last a considerable time. Our mugs (excludes wow mug) are dishwasher safe and our placemats can withstand hot tableware (naturally) and be wiped clean.

And that's why we're not 'fast food'. If it's possible to turn around a gift in double quick time, we don't mind you calling us first and we'll always try to be as helpful as possible. Depending on when you call and what you wanted to order, it is possible to get an item shipped for next day delivery in the UK (we recommend you call us before 10am). After all, that's what we're here for.

Here's a reminder of our phone number - 0845 003 4118 - that's a 'local call rate number' from within the UK and not a premium line. If you're calling from a mobile, check with your provider if you're unsure on how your network treats 0845 calls.

From July 2007 Archive - Harry Potter casts his spell on Fabulous Photo Gifts

With the latest installment of the Harry Potter books - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (why do I always want to pronounce that mud blood prince?) about to hit our cinema screens (and about time too!) - seriously, I think the film studio have made a big mistake by letting so long pass between films.

Anyway, back to the post, we had fun trawling back through our old blog posts and found this absolute gem from July 2007 - strangely enough about our family getting excited about seeing the then new film installment of everybody's favourite boy wizard - Harry Potter.

Harry Potter casts his spell - July 2007