Meijer Mounted Photo Review

My sister and I decided this would be a great gift for our parents for Christmas (hence why this blog post is going up so late. Hi mom!). Actually, our family has decided to do Christmas a little later this year and won't be exchanging gifts until this weekend instead of ON Christmas. My mom has promised not to peek here until after she has received her gifts. But at any rate, we thought this would make a great present for our parents so we recruited her boyfriend to go to the park with us on a relatively warm day in November (nearly unheard of in Ohio) and snap a few pictures at a local garden park.

We ended up choosing this picture:

Once we got to Meijer, I asked the clerk behind the photo counter if it mattered which kiosk we used to create our mounted photo. It did not. Sometimes, at other photo places, they have specific kiosks for 1-hour products and specific ones for other products that take longer or need sent out for processing. I'm glad that at Meijer it doesn't matter. Sometimes all of the kiosks are filled up and it would be nice to know that I can go to the first kiosk that opens up the next time I'm shopping for photo products at Meijer.

It took literally less than 5 minutes to click our way through all the on screen prompts and options - choosing and uploading a photo, options to enhance and edit, selecting which product we wanted, etc. There were a lot of options and if you know exactly what you want you should have no problems just clicking your way through everything. If you're a bit undecided on what you're looking for, it will probably be a more time consuming task.

At the end of the ordering process, a ticket was printed by the kiosk and the screen told me it should be ready in about an hour, but to expect it to take a little longer if things were busy. We set off to explore the rest of Meijer in search of some other Christmas gifts my sister needed. We're very familiar with Meijer and regularly get our groceries here, so we weren't really "exploring" as much as wandering around looking for things to catch our eyes.

A little less than an hour later we were done with our other shopping so I went to see if our mounted photo was done yet. It was! We were really happy it was done in less than an hour - they must not have been very busy that day.

This is what we saw when we opened the package:

 
It looks flat in the picture, but I promise it's 3-dimensional. In fact, the sides look like this:

 

It might be hard to tell from the pictures (I couldn't get the lighting to cooperate), but they're actually a brushed silver sort of color on the sides. I don't think there are other options as they weren't presented at the kiosk.

The back looks like this:

So now about the quality. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I feel that for the money they're a little cheap in construction. For the price I feel either the construction should be better or the size should be larger. They are described as being "mounted on durable, foam core mounting board." Basically this means they're mounted on Styrofoam. That's great for being light weight and all, but I feel that most/many craft-type people would be able to make these at home with very few supplies and time...and less money.

So the big question is: Would I use my own money to purchase one again?

That's a tricky question to answer really. Mostly the answer is probably not. As I'm sure you know by now, I'm a pretty crafty-type person. I feel I could make my own for less money and if I have the time I would probably do so in the future - in fact I'm envisioning the possibilities now. However, DIY projects are not for everyone and this makes a lot of sense for those who are not so crafty or just don't have the time to whip together their own version.

Some other important to know information:

• You can currently only order and purchase these in store. You cannot order them online and pick up at a store. However, in 2013 they will be available on the website as well.
• They cost a little over $6 for a 5x7 and of course increase in price as you increase in size
• Available in three sizes: 5x7, 8x10 and 11x14

Disclaimer: I am a BzzAgent and received coupons to get this product for free