Get in the groove

DISCLAIMER: This is not a sponsored post and all opinions expressed are 100% my own.

I would like to cordially invite you all to get in the groove: Groove book that is! Once in a while, a product comes along that is just too awesome NOT to share! A friend of mine recently told me about the photo app Groove book. For any of you who have not heard of it, it was recently featured on the TV show Shark Tank and was also just purchased by Shutterfly. Basically, its a subscription service and fantastic way to print out copies of your photos. The app itself is free to download for IPhone as well as Android phones.  For $2.99 a month, (plus tax: equals out to a little over $3-shipping included) you upload 100 pictures (or 40 pictures with multiple copies of each, adding up to 100) and they send you printed copies of your pictures in a bound 4x6 booklet! Each photo is perforated at the edge so that you can tear them out, or leave them in the adorable little booklet for sharing. 

I was skeptical at first when a friend of mine told me about this app. $3 for 100 printed pictures?? How good is the quality of the prints, I wondered. So, I started reading around on some reviews. Several people commented that the quality of the images was poor. Others, could not stop raving about how awesome this service was. So, I decided to go for it! You can cancel your subscription any time. So, I figured that for three bucks, I could chance it and see how it goes. I downloaded the app and started uploading pictures right away. I placed my first order the very next day. My very first Groovebook arrived just the other day. First of all, how stinking cute is this??

I was already impressed by its adorable-ness! I opened it up and continued to be blown away! The pictures came out pretty well!

I will say that the quality of the prints is directly equal to the quality of the photo itself.  In my Groovebook I had a combination of pictures from my Android phone, personal digital camera as well as high resolution pictures from a professional photographer. (You do have to upload pictures to your phone that are not take by your phones camera before you can upload them to the groove book app) The professional photos looked the best and the others reflected the quality of the pictures themselves. Depending on the size of the image, some of them had white borders as well. For my purposes however, no biggie! I scrapbook and I crop my pictures anyways, so it did not bother me a bit. The photo paper they are printed on is similar to photo paper I have seen for ink jet printers. Its thinner than photo paper from Costco or other photo printing services.  I would probably still go through another photo printing service if i needed a large print or a thicker individual print for some reason, but for scrapbooking or "brag books" Groovebook suits my need just fine!

I am just so pleased with this service and can't wait to get my next books! Your subscription gets you one Groovebook per month (for the $2.99) and charges once you close your book, or on your renewal date.  You can also order additional books for an additional $2.99 each, and can even have them sent to other friends or family members. (How great for sending out vacation or family photos to grandparents etc!) I just love that my photos can be all in one contained place, ready for scrap booking! I plan to keep ordering from  Groovebook as long as they are still in business!

For those of you who may be wondering about the app itself, I thought I would give you a quick tour. Once you upload the app, you will be asked for your info and credit card you would like to use for your subscription and any coupon codes you may have. Once you have completed that, you will reach the main screen.

To start adding photos to your book, click the "Review" button and you will be able to pick where your pictures are pulled from on your phone. Once you have uploaded photos, you can click on the photos you would like to add to your book. Once you have selected the photos you want, come back to this screen and click the "Upload" button. If you go back to the "Review" screen now, it will show you which photos you have uploaded like this.

Any pictures that you do not choose for your Groovebook will look like this.

Your pictures will remain in the file even after they have been officially printed in a Groovebook. Photos that have already been printed in a previous Groovebook will have little yellow dots in them like this.

You can always reselect any of those pictures to print in future Groovebooks as well. From the main screen, if you click the green "Information" button at the bottom of the screen, a screen of options will come up like this.

From here, you can do any number of things from editing your account info, checking your order history etc. If you click "Advanced photo selection" you get this screen, where you can change the quantity of each selected photo that you would like in your book.

As I mentioned before, you can use any number of pictures, 40 and above, and just increase the quantity to equal a total of 100 prints. The company is relatively new, and the app could use some updating (thus the reason for my quickie tutorial) but it gets the job done and I am sure with Shutterfly purchasing them, improvements and other exciting things are on the way! The shipping was pretty timely as well. If you click on the "Order history" button you can see your previous orders.

As you can see, my last book was ordered January 28. It shipped February 2nd and it arrived to me about 3 days ago. Again, not bad at all for three bucks! AND, best of all, they sent me extra prints at the end of my book with coupon codes for me to share!! SO.....all of my readers can try Groovebook for FREE!!!! If you use my coupon code, you can get your very first Groovebook free! Now, I get NO bonus or anything for you guys trying Groovebook. I really do just love it and hope that you will too! Happy Groovebook-ing!!