So as you all know, we recently asked you to go back to your roots and be childish for our ‘’The Kid In Me’’ competition. We said, and I quote- ‘’ We want you to re-capture the kid inside of you and come up with a self-portrait titled ‘The Kid In Me’. An old photo, a finger painting, a paper mache creation, anything will do.’’

Photo by: Laura Gill

So far, we’ve had some great, imaginative entries, a lot of which have made us cry with laughter. But, you know us, we want so many entries that there aren’t enough hours in the day to go through them, enough to snow John Snow under! There’s loads of ideas floating around for this comp, the possibilities are endless and as much as we would love to tell you we might have to… well then it wouldn’t be a competition!

Think – locations, what kids do, nostalgia, a play-on-words even!

As long as it’s you in the picture or an impression of you, it’s fine by us! This competition goes along side the Face Britain campaign which PhotoBox breathed life into, and what better way to celebrate this massive feat from the countries’ kids than to get the adults involved? Genius, right?!

Photo by: Zoe and Matt Mallett

Just to give you a leg up, we’ve extended the deadline for entries to Midnight Thursday 26^th April. Remember- Post your entries to OUR Facebook wall Max 2 entries, NO googling and a fab prize to the winner!  :)

Kristina

The Editor

And here are some words from our proud MD, Lawrence Merritt, PhotoBox Managing Director:

‘”PhotoBox is the premier online printing and personal publishing service in the UK.  Our pledge since our founding in 2000 has been to help our customers share and celebrate precious memories that leave behind a legacy.  Face Britain does this in an inclusive and far-reaching way. We are strong believers in embracing individualism and using our technology as a catalyst to celebrate creativity.  We at PhotoBox could not be prouder to see months of hard work and dedication come to fruition as Britain’s young people make history this week.  It gives me and my co-workers at PhotoBox great joy to know we’re a part of that. Please come and celebrate with us either on the Mall tonight or via your local screening”

Lawrence

For more details on how you can get involved and come and see this wonderful project in action, just check out our Facebook event for all the info you’ll need.

Kristina

The Editor

As you know, all of the thousands of works of art produced by kids up and down the country will be projected onto Buckingham Palace from the 19^th  to the 21^nd of April. Worry not, for those not close to the capital, this incredible montage of HM the Queen made up of more than 200,000 self-portraits, will be screened for 24 hours from 8.30 on Thursday 19^th April on BBC Live sites up and down Britain, including Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford and many more. If that wasn’t enough, over 400 JCDecaux screens all over the nation’s train stations and shopping centres will be showing a piece of the action. To top it all off and send the project into stratospheric proportions, there will also be an Ebay auction from the 3^rd-the 13^th of May for all of the portraits entered by celebrities, so you can really get your hands on a famous face!

Portrait by Fearne Cotton

The fun doesn’t end there, oh no, we’ve just got started Face Britain is going for a Guinness World Record attempt for ‘’The Most artists working on the same art installation’’. The current record is 28,267 artists, so fingers crossed! Guinness World Record officials will announce whether a new world record has been set when the projection onto the palace finishes.

Face Britain is a unique project created by The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts and brought to life by PhotoBox to provide a platform to celebrate the nation’s children and young people in the lead up to HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, The London Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts is an educational charity established by HRH The Prince of Wales to enable disadvantaged young people to access and engage with professional arts.

So the kids have done their bit, let’s see how you fare! We want you to re-capture the kid inside of you and come up with a self-portrait titled ‘The Kid In Me’. An old photo, a finger painting, a paper mache creation, anything will do. But the more imagination the better! You can enter a maximum of 2 per person and make sure you post them to our Facebook wall pretty please!

So there you have it! For a full list of screen locations and the latest news and gossip from Face Britain join our event on Facebook.

Kristina

The Editor

Recently, Face Britain closed for entries after schools up and down the country submitted thousands of self-portraits by kids aged 4-16 hoping to make British history. Now all these great portraits will be put together, ready for the world to see as each individual portrait will be made into a mosaic of HM The Queen and projected onto Buckingham Palace. In the words of Greg Wallace from Masterchef, it doesn’t get bigger than this!

PhotoBox has brought this huge project to life to help encourage youngsters to use art for positive effects in education and to just plain have fun. Over the coming weeks, events, exhibitions and even a Guinness World Record attempt will be kicking off to celebrate everyone’s hard work for HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Head over to the Face Britain website and have a sneak peek at all of the awesome entries before the big event at Buckingham Palace which will be held for three whole days on the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st of April. So if your child has entered a portrait, hunt it down and be sure to look out for it at one of the events near you. You can also get your hands on some funky Face Britain merchandise with your child’s self-portrait so you’ll never forget their moment of fame!

Kristina

The Editor

Today our Facebook page got a new outfit in the form of the timeline. For those of you that haven’t the foggiest what we’re talking about, Facebook decided a few months ago that they would change the layout of everyone’s profile to an all-new timeline style. This allows you and the secret squirrels out there to see what you’ve been doing over the years. Now, while some people think the change is a bad thing, PhotoBox reckons it’s not too shabby!

Photo by Dave Flynn

The new timeline makes it easy to go back in time, see where it all began and how we’ve become a community in front of your eyes – the photos, the laughter, the smiles, the fun. The journey has been epic and we couldn’t have done it without you guys. It reads beautifully and looks great! Keeping in the spirit of our PhotoBox motto, ‘you at the heart of everything we do’, we asked you to send us your interpretation of our beloved green star and you didn’t disappoint! Today, the photo gracing our cover is by Dave Flynn, we just loved the simplicity and how crisp it looks. For those of you that entered great, imaginative pics, fear not! You shall be showcased in the very near future. So guys, what do you think? Likey or not?

Kristina

The Editor

I don’t know about you but I love this time of year, beautiful flowers, blossom on the trees, sunshine! What more could you want? With all those bright, vibrant colours it’s the perfect time of year to be busy little bees, bust out your camera and get outside and start snapping some amazing pictures.

Photo by Lou Carr

So we reckoned it was the perfect opportunity for a competition! We want you guys to bring the sunshine in, into us, into your pictures and more importantly, onto our Facebook wall! Think of what spring means to you, from the flowers in your garden to the cucumber in your Pimms. As always, we encourage you to be creative but most of all, have fun, enjoy and show us some photos that will make us jealous being stuck here in the office! Birds in the trees, boats on the sea, a bee on your cream tea, you name it we want to see it!

Photo by Julie Anne Skelton

The usual rules apply, max 2 photos per person and absolutely NO googling. Photos must be entered by midnight on Tuesday April 10^th when the competition closes. So get snapping, there’ll be a great prize for the winner, which will be announced soon J

Kristina

The Editor

We asked Carine Roberts- one of our oh-so loyal Facebook fans to write a post for us on her experience with the Face Britain campaign and boy, she didn’t disappoint

What a fantastic week it’s been! I organised and ran two Face Britain art afternoons at my children’s school, St Philips R.C Primary School, Uckfield. I originally read about the project on the Photobox Facebook page and thought that it was a fantastic project to be a part of.

I was inspired to approach my children’s school and ask if they wanted to take part in this project and become a part of British history. I had help from several parent volunteers, and we were really lucky that all the teachers were on board too. The children were thrilled that their works of art would be used to make up a gigantic portrait of the Queen and they were also amazed that their pictures would be held in the National Archives. I was adamant that they shouldn’t get too bogged down with trying to make their pictures perfect works of art (I used to find drawing myself so difficult at school – especially my nose!)

We were really nervous about using acrylics on canvas with the reception children, but it was a huge success. The children loved finger painting and exploring different effects by using different parts of their hands. I am now in the process of collecting the parent consent forms and once they’re all in, I will be uploading them onto the Face Britain gallery for all the parents to see. It’s not just about getting them printed as photos or even greetings cards, Photobox can transfer your children’s art onto mugs, mousemats and even t-shirts! I’m thinking that my children would love to see their mugs on a mug… All in all, it wasn’t too difficult to organise and it was well worth it – I’m still on a high after seeing so many excited children creating such happy, colourful self-portraits!

Carine xx

PhotoBox is a force to be reckoned with but we simply couldn’t be this awesome without you. You guys make PhotoBox what it is – passion, emotion, photos, life’s little moments captured in a click, you guys are our stars of the show!

Enough of the gushing – what do you want PhotoBox?

Well, I’m sure you all know that Facebook will be saying ‘Out with the old and in with the new’ next week and giving its pages a little face lift. That’s right my lovelies, from the 30^th March, our PhotoBox page will get its glad rags on and do what it does best – dress to impress with you and your photos taking centre stage.

So your mission, should you accept it, is to get creative and invent your own interpretation of our beloved PhotoBox star. Pay homage to 24LIVE- draw the star, make it with spaghetti if you must, make it out of paper mache, cut it out of newspaper. Whatever you do, be fun, be creative and be you. All we ask is that you make it green, there’s a person holding or posing with it and it resembles our logo, then just post it on our Facebook wall :)

The closing date for entries is Wednesday 28th of March.

Are you game? Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Kristina

The Editor

Congratulations to Dave Flynn who won our fantastic Facebook, Mother’s Day photo competition and scoops the fabulous prize of a seven-night family break with family holiday favourite- Eurocamp!

Photo by Dave Flynn

Judging the competition was definitely a toughie! But the emotion, love and joy behind Dave’s photo just won us over.  So enjoy your awesome prize Dave! Also a big shout out to our 2 runners up- Heather Playdon and Tony Gainsborough, well done guys!

Photo by Tony Gainsborough                                             Photo by Heather Playdon

Don’t worry if you’re not a winner, the lovely folks over at Eurocamp are offering you two nights completely FREE when booking a family holiday of between seven and 16 nights.  So if you fancied a 7 night holiday, you’d only pay for five nights*

Everyone’s a winner! Be sure to share all your holiday snaps with Eurocamp – Eurocamp Official on Facebook and @Eurocamp_UK on Twitter – in thanks for this generous offer!

After checking out all the holiday options at http://www.eurocamp.co.uk/ all you need to do is call 0844 406 0402, and quote the code: 12-PHOTO. It’s that simple!

*terms and conditions apply

• Offer available between 12.03.12 and 30.05.12
• The two free nights will be applied to the cheapest nights within the holiday
• Two free nights only apply to holidays of between 7 and 16 nights and also when holiday is taken on/after 30.03.12 and completed by 28.06.12 or taken on/after 03.09.12 and completed by 25.10.12
• Available only through Eurocamp Contact Centre quoting 12-PHOTO
• This offer does not apply to bookings for Loft Mobile Homes, Bungalows or Safari Tents
• Offer is only applicable to Eurocamp European holiday parcs and excludes Apartment Resorts, USA, Denmark and Motorhome holidays
• Offer is combinable with Eurocamp’s fixed price offer and loyalty discount where applicable

Kristina

The Editor

Yesterday we got dolled up and spent the afternoon being typically British, drinking tea, eating shortbread and curtseying to our future Queen and their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall. Their Royal Highnesses attended the Dulwich Picture Gallery for an event supporting Great Art Quest, a project run by The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts. The visit also highlighted Children & the Arts’ Face Britain project, which has been brought to life by none other than our very selves.

During their visit to the gallery, Their Royal Highnesses chatted to the kids, artists and storytellers involved with the project, and heard from teachers about how the project has benefited both learning and personal development in children.What were they like I bet you want to know? Well, I can’t tell you how they take their tea or if they watch Eastenders, but they were awesome and they have a real passion for the arts. Also, Kate’s dress put mine to shame, darn! It gave us all an amazing buzz to know that what we’ve been doing for Face Britain and all this hard work has really paid off and made a difference in so many kids and seeing their beautiful, smiling faces when they got to show off their work just made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The deadline for entries is just fifteen days away so get the kids involved and let them be part of history. Their sunny portraits will be made into a mosaic of Her Majesty The Queen and projected on Buckinbgham Palace for three consecutive nights in April and displayed live onto screens up and down the country. For more information on how to get involved click here.