App Review: A Beautiful Mess

A Beautiful Mess is a stylish photo app which allows users to add fun filters, fonts and doodles, to an image of their choice. The app was created by Elsie & Emma founders of the blog of the same name www.abeautifulmess.com. The app has quickly risen to the top of the app charts and at the point of writing is currently enjoying spot number 15 in the top 100 paid charts in the App Store.

**A Beautiful Mess has been updated (as of September 2013)... head to the end of this post to read about the latest additions! 

Users can download either an existing background, or select an image from their photo library to begin. Images can then be scaled or cropped and then styled by applying a choice of borders, filters, text, doodles and phrases to create your own masterpiece. The image can then be easily shared with friends via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or email.

We love the colour options, the unique fonts and the interface which is really easy to navigate.  The filters apply a number of different looks including ‘classic’ or ‘spotlight’ which transforms the image, making it a lot of fun to use.

There are however a number of in-app purchases and due to this, a significantly limited choice of backgrounds. A great update in the future could include saving completed images in the app, so that there is one place to view all user-created photos.

A Beautiful Mess in a word is gorgeous, it helps you create fun and engaging images and it’s simple to use. We would definitely recommend it to those who love creating pictures, messing with fonts and applying doodles to photos and sending them to your friends!

Score: 8/10

Price: £0.69

We love... The app's design, colours and icons

We'd like to... View all of the photo creations in one place within the app

Here’s one we made earlier… 

**My review has been updated , since  A Beautiful Mess released its latest version of the app and added more features!**

Since the initial launch of A Beautiful Mess, Elsie & Emma listened carefully to user feedback and with this latest version (1.06) released a wealth of additions including extra fonts, doodles and backgrounds to the free & basic package you get when you first download the app.

The most significant change has to be the addition of the undo-redo feature which now finally allows you to swipe left to undo and right again to redo your actions. This enables the user much more flexibility when creating images and the ability to edit, instead of starting all over again each time you make a mistake.

There are still many in-app purchases taking the form of doodle, font and border bundles or packages, so to have full use of the app, bear this in mind. However you can still create gorgeous images even with the basic package, and the app continues to be one of the most helpful tools when creating images to go with our blog posts , or inspiring pins over on our Pinterest boards. 

It’s also worth mentioning that the team at A Beautiful Mess love to see the creations on Twitter, so make sure you use the hashtag #ABeautifulMess when sharing to be in with the chance of being featured over on their lovely, and incredibly popular lifestyle blog!

Here’s one we made earlier….

To find out more about their latest photo book and to see the photo challenges Jane has been attempting over the last couple of months click here.

Katie x