photography LOVE

For Crafty Christmas 2010, I made my sister Lisa a LOVE-ly gift. I've been really inspired by alphabet art of late. I first saw the idea at the Georgia Apple Festival, but have since learned that they were really made popular by Oprah way back in 2007. Apparently I was in the dark all these years, so thank heavens I attend regionally appropriate craft fairs to get me up to speed on the current trends.

I decided to go with the word 'LOVE,' mostly because I figure she'll get married someday and won't want her current last name framed, and also because 'Robison' is entirely too long in the picture-framing world. Besides, a frame with more than four letters wouldn't have fit into my suitcase.

I simply took black and white photos, made them slightly more 'sepia' on my computer, and had 4x6 copies printed by my favorite Walgreens employee. Voila....

The possibilities are pretty endless with this craft as long as you're willing to get creative. Here are a few tips to help you avoid problems I ran into:

1. If you're using a digital camera, leave space around your letters. My first try yielded unhappy results since I zoomed all the way in on my object (turning the image into a standard 4x6 photo will crop a little bit of the border).

2. Take several versions of each photo. This will allow you to choose the best photo of each letter (my favorite on the screen wasn't always my favorite when printed.)

3. Don't bring the frame home in your luggage - even in bubble wrap - because its going to break! Of course then you'll have to rush to a hardware store to get a new piece of glass cut, which will naturally be 1/16 of an inch too large. And then your father will have to bust out his power tools to shave away the inside of your frame so that your glass fits and your Christmas gift is saved......

In the end, it all worked out lovely (pun most definitely intended). In fact, I've even started calling this two thousand e-LOVE-en. As in, i love my job i love my life i love my dog. You know, kind of like this:

{yes you may use my LOVE photos!! they are absolutely free to use for your personal non-commercial interests}