Make your own Custom View-Master reels from Image 3D!

I have found what is quite possibly the coolest personalized product you can buy, anywhere.  Thanks to PTPA, I got a chance to test out the Custom View-Master Style Reel and Viewer set and it is now in my top 10 products for the year.

Remember those View Master reels you used to have as a kid?  Well, I still love them and I have a bunch of them from my own childhood as well as those I’ve been collecting for my kiddos with the newer characters.  With both the 80s reels and the newer ones, we now have a drawer full of viewers and reels we play with.

But, now we’ve got something cooler than Mickey or Disney princesses to look at with the addition of a CUSTOM View Master reel from Image 3D to our collection.  Made with pictures right from my computer, I was able to make a special View Master reel that includes the highlights of my husband’s and my adventures from 1997 – 2008 {up until we had our babies – that’s for additional reels, which I WILL be ordering soon}.

I made the reel as an anniversary surprise for him, and it was seriously the most perfect gift I could have gotten him.  Sentimental and personal without being mushy or girly, the Custom View Master is perfect for just about anyone, but especially for a family that loves vintage and retro gifts as much as we do.

And, it wasn’t nearly as hard to make the reel as I had thought it would be.  Really, the hardest part was finding the perfect 7 pictures for it since we have tons of pictures and most of our early days together were 100% real film {yes, kids, we’ve been together that long}.  Scanning in older pictures covertly was a bit difficult, but I managed to hide them until reel arrived, which thankfully was very quick.

Once I had the pictures, I merely logged into the Build-A-Reel site {don’t skip this step or it won’t save your work!}, started uploading pictures, and then I could make the edits I wanted. 
I decided to edit them all to black and white since some of our pictures were with black and white film and I didn’t want to switch between color modes.

After they were all converted to black and white, I cropped the pictures as I wanted, and added 3D text and graphics {since I was pulling from different years and places, I put the location and year as reference for the kids}.  I then chose a picture for the center of the reel, made sure the title looked good, and it was set.  All that was left now was previewing the reel, which I thought was really fun because you can see exactly what the finished product would look like, and then I just submitted my order.  

A week or so later and I was holding my special anniversary reel in my hands and I couldn’t be more excited.  It was all I could do to wait a few days to give the reel to hubby, which still was waaaay too early for our anniversary, but I didn’t care.  You can’t hold out on something as cool as a personalized View Master reel.  Am I right?     

And, even though it was a few weeks early, we still loved looking back on our adventures together thus far.  We might have said "Look at us!  We're BABIES!" more than a few times as we looked at our Image 3D reel together. 

It was fun to reminisce with him and enjoy our pictures all over again, thrilled that they now will see the light of day.  I was so happy that gems such as this one from our honeymoon {those are our Cook Island drivers licenses – complete with dust and fuzz all over the pictures} won't forever be trapped in photo albums {ahem *boxes* ahem}. 

Whether you are shopping for a family gathering, a high school reunion, a special birthday, or simply as a birthday present or for your own collection, anyone would be delighted to open up a personalized reel just for them.   Viewers come in 4 colors: red, black, blue, and white, and can even be custom engraved with larger orders {perfect for weddings, family and high school reunions, etc}

Want to find out more about why Image 3D won the PTPA Seal of Approval?  Check out what their testers {AKA meeeeee!} had to say at the Image 3D winning product page.  You can visit image3d.com to start the reel building process and see what you come up with.

A big thank you to PTPA for allowing me to test such a cool item.  I wasn't obligated in any way to write this post, I just really wanted to share it with you.  As always, all opinions are 100% ours.