Turn your photos into whimsical wonders with the A Beautiful Mess iPhone app

The Beautiful Mess iPhone app, from the cult lifestyle blog of the same name, is designed to let you enhance your photos and turn them into quirky masterpieces. You can personalise images with layers of text, doodles, borders – and of course, filters – and then share them online.

Elsie and Emma, the bloggers behind the app, say it was created with ‘blogging, scrapbooking and Instagram in mind.’ It’s in the similar style of arty and aspirational lifestyle blogs, like their own, that have prompted many copies and millions of Pinterest pins. And it’s already very popular – only released a few days ago, the app is currently sitting in second place on the App Store paid app chart.

Here’s what you can do with the A Beautiful Mess app:

If all that’s not enough, you can also make in-app purchases of extra fonts, doodles and backgrounds (69p per pack). And for loyal followers there’s a dedicated hashtag, #ABMapp.

So what’s the app like? The look and feel is very much of the moment, so it probably doesn’t have a very long shelf life. It’s the Internet equivalent of putting stickers on your school pencil case, or adding clipart to a 90’s PowerPoint presentation. However, it’s very simple to use, makes your photos look great, and for only 69p it’s a lot of fun to play around with.

It’s available for iPhone only at the moment, and you’ll need iOS 6 and up. Buy it on the iTunes store here for 69p.

Gill Crawshaw writes A Baby on Board www.ababyonboard.com, a blog about London life as a new mum. Find her on Twitter at @gill_crawshaw.