New Flip Pal toy and cover design

At the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree I bought a new toy. It's called the Flip Pal, and is a portable scanning device. It can be used as a flattop for 4 x6 in pictures, or the cover can be removed and the scanner flipped to place directly on the book or picture to be scanned.  It can then be moved  and the different scans "stitched" together to make a single picture.  It stores the scans on an SD card, and runs on 4 AA batteries... It's about 6 x 9 inches, and is very light! 

I bought a little soft case for it (red) so I won't lose it, and decided to make a custom vinyl skin for the scan cover, so I can tell my scanner from everyone else's.  And I might have to ....they were selling like hot cakes!   It cost about twice what the Magic Wand scanner cost me last year, but since you don't have to move the scanner manually, the Flip Pal is  much simpler to use.... I never could get the scanning pace quite right with the wand .....

I wanted a unique cover, but I'm no artist... and then  remembered from one of Thomas MacEntee's challenges (winter games?)  about using wordle.net to create a collage of surnames.... so I did, and thought it would make a striking cover..... and like no other!
Looks pretty good,  and I didn't have to draw a thing! It is rotated 90deg for the scanner cover....

Since I leave Friday night for Washington DC and then to NY for research, I expect that it will be well used in the next month, and I hope to add many pics to this blog both from pictures at home, and documents from DC.

Thanks again Thomas, for all your great tips including Wordle!