Customer Reviews

HEWQ6625A - Printable iPod Tattoos

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought these on a whim for my wife's iPod. She had originally purchased an iSkin to dress up her iPod more-so then protect it, but that fell apart in about a week so she was just back to using it as is. I saw these and thought we should give them a try to spice things up.

Upon their arrival, we went to the HP Tattoo website (http://h10058.www1.hp.com/digital/entertainment/us/en/music/tattoos/tattoo_gallery.jsp?defaultDeviceName=iPod) and downloaded a couple of their freely available tattoos and discovered that they have a tool that allows you to make your own tattoo with the ability to upload your own art/pictures (very cool). Anyway, we set up Acrobat and our printer per the instructions included in the package and printed a nice looking tattoo which we had downloaded. It was a bit tricky to make sure the tattoo was lined-up/fed into the printer properly due to the front of the load tray being concealed a bit on our printer and the tattoo being quite a bit shorter than a normal piece of paper; but, we got it right on the first try. It printed flawlessly and came out looking super sharp and colorful. It is almost like printing a digital photo on ink jet photo printer paper.

Following the instructions, we removed the tattoo from the backing and applied it to the iPod without any issues. There were no bubbles or wrinkles and the Tattoo fits the iPod nicely, surrounding the screen and scroll wheel tightly without any gaps. HP says the tattoo will last two weeks or so and that it can be removed simply by peeling it off without leaving any sticky residue . We've yet to do that but based on what the adhesive felt like, I tend to believe this will be true.

There are a couple of negative aspects that we discovered about these tattoos. First of all, the tattoo prints on the WHOLE card on which the tattoo comes; however, the actual tattoo only comprises about 40-50% of this and there is a lot of wasted ink on what is eventually the tattoo backing that's discarded. This can be avoided when making your own tattoo by using an appropriately cropped picture/art file, but the cool tattoos HP has for use waste a lot of color ink. Secondly, since the front of your iPod has the scroll wheel and the screen, most of the tattoo surface area ends up on the sides and back of the iPod. While it still dresses it up nicely, it's hard to get a good design fully on the front of the iPod. Solid colors or patterns seem to be the best options for using these tattoos. Photos end up looking a bit strange on the iPod Tattoo. While these are picky complaints, they keep the Tattoos from getting 5 stars but they are definitely worth the purchase, at least once. They're quite a bit of fun!

Our setup:
Printer: HP PSC 950
iPod: 4th generation 20GB.

The tattoos are quite cute, and I had no trouble with alignment in my printer; however, they aren't quite as sticky as I'd thought they'd be. The top and bottom flaps, in particular, seemed likely to pull back.

The tattoos are pretty easy to create -- I used the online tool (search for tattoo on their site) to upload one of my photos, rotate and crop it, then create a .pdf file to print.

FWIW: I currently use the tattoos with a clear iPod case and that solves the peeling edges issue nicely.

I would not recommend these to anyone! The website recommended on the packaging to download the patterns doesn't even have the templates for this product anymore. Once you can actually get one of your photos to format correctly, the templates don't stick well. This was a total waste of money - there are many other covers out there that work TONS better. Please take my advice and don't waste your time and money on this product! I wish I hadn't.

I recently purchased the HP Printable Tattoos for my IPod Mini. They were impossible to locate, since the minis have been discontinued, but I found them at Walmart. They provide a cheap, creative way to decorate your IPod, much cheaper (and much more fun) than just buying a case from the store. I would recommend buying a clear case to put over it for protection, but they do stay on for awhile. This adds a much more personal touch (as you can design your very own tattoo) to your IPod, and also guarantees that no one else you know will have quite the same covering for their IPod. So what's there to lose?