Instagram is a MilSo's best friend. It's a great way to easily snap and share: with deployed personnel, family back home, and friends from all over.
Also, it's the greatest way to come up with fun add-ins for care package and military life. Here are our favorites for the MilSolifestyle.
7 cool things you can do with Instagram
1. Send a Cocoagraph during deployment.
It's like Hersheys and telegraphs met in mail heaven and gave you a chocolatey, perfect present. Cocoagraph pulls images from your Instagram account and wraps them around the chocolate bar of your choice - milk, dark, white, organic dark - to make for the perfect sweet present. #yum.
2. Make super cool wall art.
I really struggle with how to do family photos when we're constantly dealing with moves, but Ixxi solves that problem. It will take your Instagram photos (or major works of art or favorite posters or or or...) and turn them into large, moveable wall art installations. Ixxi is a flexible system, so you can continuously move and exchange the squares... which is great for growing families (let's put the Halloween pictures up right now!) and for families on the move (oh hey, let's move this to our new house!). Also, it's just really cool.
3. Teeny, Tiny Books are the best!
I'm always looking for cool things to stick in a care package, and Tiny Books definitely take the cake. These itty bitty books take your Instagram photos and bind them in true book fashion. Wouldn't they make your Soldier happy? All the cute pictures you've taken this month? I can just see the smile on their faces when they open the boxes!
I also love the idea of doing these for kids with dad or mom's pictures in it as a way to hold on to the family member that might be out of pocket. Missing dad? Here's a little book you can keep zipped in your school bag to take him with you wherever you are.
4. Stitchtagram a present.
Likewise, this is an awesome anywhere-you-go present. Stitchtagram puts your pictures on pillowcases, bags, coin purses, wristlets, and zipper pouches... I think the zipper pouches are my favorite. It's a great place for pencils, childhood treasures, pocket book organizers for you, special-things-holders for anyone deployed. And all with your favorite pictures all over them!
5. Keepsy Calendars
Keepsy also does photo albums, but their calendars are the best. Their pages are big, colorful, and high quality... and you also get to choose from a variety of photo sizes. And in Instagram world, that's a big deal.
6. Mini prints
We did two huge stacks of mini prints after our son was born (they also make stickers, which are super cute) and, sending the images hither and yon, I even included them on our Halloween care package. The quality is great. The little images are so cute (they're four by four inches in the larger size and two and three quarter inches square in the smaller size) and the quality strong. They fit in wallets, envelopes, and make for lots of smiles.
7. Canvaspop
I love love love love love these prints on canvas. You see these advertised all over the place today, but mostly they come out kind of disappointing. Not so with Canvaspop! They use a picture-perfect technology to turn your low-res Instagrams into print-res awesomeness. Honestly, I'm going to decorate our next house in these and Ixxi.
Do you use Instagram? What do you do with your images - let them sit there to be seen, or do you print for real life?
