The Lazy Girl's Guide to Christmas Shopping...For Grandparents

This post bought to you by Photobox.com.au

This is the first in my new series of Lazy Girl's Guides, all about Christmas Shopping! Some will be in collaboration with brands. Like this one. But I wouldn't post about them if it wasn't something I have used or wanted myself anyway. You can read my Disclosure policy here. Some won't be. Either way, my aim is to help fellow lazy girl's, and those for whom the thought of going within 5 kms of the shops in the lead-up to Christmas sends them into convulsions.

While I've titled this post Christmas Shopping for Grandparents, really, what I'm about to tell you about will make awesome gifts for anyone, especially those who love their photos and personalised photo-gifts.

I've been a big fan of giving personalised photo gifts for quite a few years now, pretty much since I created my first photo book online with some of our wedding photos. I made one for myself and I made some for our parents and I don't think a year has gone by since then that I didn't create at least one photo book for someone in my life.

And now you can create a whole range of awesome things and personalise them with your most precious photographs, something of which I have many! My second favourite photo gift, after the photo book, is the photograph on canvas. There is just something about a photo canvas that is just that little bit more special than a simple print in a frame. And they look fabulous on your wall too!

When I was first contacted about a new online photo printing service in Australia I was excited. I don't use the online services to print photos, I bought my own kick-arse printer for that. I do however love to create other photo gifts, as I mentioned, and I am always on the look out for good bargains, and most of all, good quality.

Photobox fills both of those requirements and more! They have a great selection of products to choose from and their prices are really competitive. There are quite a few online photo printing services these days and in my personal opinion and experience, Photobox is one of the best I've used.

The lovely people at Photobox were kind enough to let me try out their service and create a photo book of my own. I ummed and ahhed about who I should make the book for and then I decided "Bugger that!". I always make them for other people, this time I was going to treat myself.

I decided to create an A4 photo book with photos from our trip to New York in 2010. New York is one of the most amazing cities, with so many awesome things to photograph, so of course I took a bazillion photos. Creating the photo book was so easy on Photobox, I was really surprised. They had a huge range of ready-made theme templates to choose from, as well as the standard ones with no theme. The thing I liked the most was that you customise absolutely everything on the page, something which hasn't been available at other times on other services that I have used. I was also able to import photos from a number of sources, like Facebook and Instagram, or straight from my computer hard drive, and I didn't have to wait for the large files to finish uploading before I could create my book.

The hardest part about the whole process was simply choosing which photos to include! Photobox give a generous amount of pages in their basic starter book and that was really attractive to someone with so many pictures like me. The finished product was created and despatched to me really quickly, it took about a week and a half from placing the order for it to arrive in my mailbox.

The quality of the book was outstanding. I chose all of the basic options in terms of type of cover and paperstock. If the basics are good quality then you can be assure that anything more premium will be top-notch. I'm really happy with my  photo book and I will most definitely be using Photobox to create some more books for my parents and the in-laws.

Photo books for the grandparents are really the perfect Christmas gift, especially small-size, softcover books. They are perfect for proud Grandmothers to pop in their handbag so they can show of their gorgeous grandchildren to whoever they run in to, and proud Grandfather's will be showing the book in the face of anyone who walks in their front door. And yes I am speaking of this from personal experience!

Photobox also make photo canvas', photo cards, calendars & diaries, and of course, photo prints. Not to mention iPhone and iPad covers, including iPad covers with keyboards, and Samsung Galaxy phone cases.

And now, Photobox have agreed to give you the chance to make your own A4 photobook for yourself or a loved one.
To be in the running to win, simply leave me a comment and tell me, what's the best gift your kids have given their grandparents?

The boring bits:
Competition opens 12:01am AEDT on Friday 15th November and closes 11:59pm AEDT Friday 22nd November, 2013 and is open to Australian residents only.
Winner will be chosen by me, Kylie Purtell, and contacted by email (or facebook or twitter if you don't have a registered email address). If winner does not claim their prize by return email by Wednesday 27th November a new winner will be chosen and notified.
The winner will need to create an account with Photobox.com.au (free to do) and will recieve credit to cover the cost of creating and mailing an A4 photobook.
This competition is a game of skill and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Facebook.
I was given Photobox credit to create my own A4 personalised photo book for the purposes of reviewing the site. As always the opinions and views expressed are my own.