If there is one thing I am not, it is patient. For example, I cannot stand the fact that today is the 14th and not the 15th. If it were the 15th, Justin would be getting paid today and receiving his check by Wednesday. But no. Tomorrow, Saturday, is the 15th. This means that Justin won't get paid until Thursday since his paycheck will go out on Monday (the 17th) and be in the bank Thursday (three days later, the 19th).
On the one hand, I LOVE the fact that it is Friday. I think I look forward to that every week. BUT I also look forward to pay day. Not my pay day, but instead Justin's. My pay day hardly makes a difference to our finances. I slowly but surely add money to savings like The Little Engine That Could (the children's book). Unfortunately, that's all my money really does. Sit there in savings until we have some crazy bill we can't afford, weren't thinking about or planning for, or ... something. There always seems to be something.
Justin's paycheck, on the other hand, means we get to pay off bills and pay down debt! I LOVE paying down debt! (And bills.) It's like I have this mental check list in my head and the sooner I can get things taken care of, the happier I am. I get super excited when I am able to make money appear out of nowhere. I like saving money on budgeted items or getting a super great deal at the store ... or even when I'm able to convince a service provider to charge us just a wee bit less. It's like Christmas! I can't stand the fact that we have to spread our bills and budgeting out over the course of the month. Oh well. I guess being patient is a necessary and important part of life.
In other news, I'm currently reformatting my iphoto library! Maybe it will start working well enough for me to share my pizza making tutorial! (It will be fun! I promise!)
I received my trial order from Artsy Couture yesterday. At first I was super excited. I had heard such great things about them, and I was expecting to be impressed and/or amazed. To be blunt, I prefer my Costco order. Depressing, right? :-/
My Artsy Couture order came in a typical postal box which I loved. I loved knowing that any images inside that box would be in pristine condition. The box itself was easy enough to open up. The images on the other hand were a tad difficult. Protected by two layers of plastic wrap and some cardboard on either side, I was crazy worried I was going to accidentally cut into the pictures. Luckily that second bit of plastic wrap was just enough to protect my images.
Artsy Couture prides itself in including wrapping for your images, so that they look beautiful when you give them to your clients. This was one of the things I was most excited about seeing. Unfortunately this wrapping was a flower on top of cardboard. Really Artsy Couture?! I was expecting, at the very least, a beautifully designed manilla style folder with a flower. I can't exactly stuff my images into a piece of cardboard, can I? I'm not sure why I would ever want to present a floral cardboard on top of images when providing them to a client. It just makes no sense. And even if the cardboard floral thing was just an example ... why? Why wouldn't you provide the real thing as an example? How am I suppose to base my opinion of the product off of a piece of cardboard?
Moving on...
I understand that a photo printing company can have excellent work and bad packaging. Obviously they are in the "printing of beautiful images" career and not the "designing beautiful packages for the images" career. You cannot necessarily provide both aspects, and that is reasonable. I don't expect a chef to have a fantastic personal website; that's not what s/he does best.
When reading reviews of Artsy Couture I had heard that they had amazing, beautifully saturated printing capabilities. I LOVE saturation. I LOVE color. I LOVE when my images pop. And I was expecting to LOVE Artsy Couture. But truth be told, my images did not pop.Yes, they were saturated well enough, and the color was decent, but they just didn't POP. I expect that I don't get everything right all of the time. Maybe I didn't have the contrast cranked up enough or the saturation wasn't just right. I get that. I was just disappointed that my images were low contrast and much brighter than the images I receive from Costco. Not to mention one image in particular had way too much red. And another image was a bit blurry in comparison to Costco.
I do have to say that I was all for the nice thick paper Artsy Couture printed on. Costco paper just felt flimsy and weightless in your hands compared to Artsy Couture.
The one thing I was hoping to try was to print a canvas print with Artsy Couture. I've heard the canvas prints are AMAZING! But for now I may stick with Costco, AdoromaPix, and WHCC. I still haven't found a printer I am head-over-heels in love with, but the search must continue!
**Sidenote: I had pictures, but iphoto is still hating on me after reformatting. Since Google is of no help, this problem may need to be taken up with Apple or Justin, whoever will help me first, assuming of course I don't delete everything in iphoto out of frustration. (I might!)
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I have found that Millers Lab is well worth the extra money. I was satisfied with Artsy's prints well enough, but EVERY order has had an error--miscut, wrinkled when mounted, bent edges, spots on the prints. It is a waste of time & money to have to request remakes after each order. I love their gallery wraps though. They are a great product. ProDPI has pretty good quality prints, but I still prefer Millers (and their overnight shipping, because I too am impatient).
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