Christmas Present Project

I saw this link HERE on pinterest and thought that sounded like a great present. (For those of you too lazy to click the link, I copied the picture below.)

My problem was - where the heck do you find a frame big enough for that? Joseph's parents and my parents both have nine kids - that's nine photos side by side. It makes for quite a long picture. I knew I could always custom order a frame but a) that took time and b) it is quite expensive. Multiply that by two and I was looking for another solution.

Then I stumbled across how to transfer photos to blocks. Um, brilliant.

First I had to organize my family to take all the photos. Not an easy task. Also, cutting out the posterboard letters was a pain. We took some photos with the letters but we took photos without the letters too, so I ended up with great presents for the rest of my family. Score!

Plus, I was able to practice on the smaller projects before I tackled the larger ones.

This picture turned out really well. My sister Shanna was really happy with it.

Here's the one I made for my family. It says "We love you" because our last name isn't nine letters long. I wasn't 100% happy with it. Some of the ink scrapes off, which is fine for a vintage-y look, but one of my nephew's face completely scraped off and I was not happy. I think I didn't get the paper wet enough.

Here's the one I did for Joseph's family. We were able to spell out the last name because the number of letters matched the number of kids. Again, I wasn't 100% happy. His parents and younger siblings live in FL, so I had to wait until they came right before Christmas to visit and then only had a couple rushed minutes to sneak away and take photos. Then I had to flip the pictures in Photoshop (because otherwise they are backwards), print the photos (on a laser printer, one of the big copy machine types, not the ink jet printer at home), apply everything carefully with the gel medium, let it set overnight, get it wet and rub the paper off (two of Joseph's brothers helped with that part and then told their parents they helped rub the present), and modge podge it. This ended up being quite the project. The smaller pictures weren't too bad, but planning and coordinating the larger pictures was quite stressful.

Here are just a few more I did. After buying the gel medium (which was a bit pricey) and the wood (which I cut up into the two large photos and three smaller ones - the rest came from scrap in my garage) it ended up being a fairly economical present considering how much I got out of it. Although I think I rubbed off my finger prints. I could probably go commit a crime.