Photos On Canvas
February 3, 2012
Don't Let The Innocence Be Lost!
Are you looking for a long-lasting way to show off your photo? While shopping, I came across a do it yourself kit for putting your photos on canvas. This got me to thinking about all the photos I could display in a whole new way. You can have a professional make up the canvas or you can go the do it yourself route.
The Professional Way
Oh how easy it is to upload your photos to a canvas photo website and let the professionals handle the rest. You do have to make a couple of choices before they get to work. You need to research what form of ink they use. Make sure it is archival grade ink. Most sites offer framed and unframed photos on canvas. One option is to get the canvas only or have the canvas stretched over artist stretch bars for a tight mount. Stretch bars also come in different thickness check your website for the sizes they offer. You can usually decorate the outside of the frame mount with the image wrapping around the mount or your chose of color. Once you choose the thickness of your mount then you can put a frame around the canvas. Every website differs as to what they are willing to do to a photo and at what price. They can enhance the picture but remember how good the picture looks is based on what it started as. You can also request touch ups for blemishes, red eye, whitened teeth or have objects removed from the photo. Do you want your photo in color, black and white or sepia?
Do it yourself
I love to scrapbook and make crafts with my photos, especially the ones highlighting the special times in my children’s lives. The thought of saving money and being able to put my photos on whatever shape canvas I want is particularly an enticing concept. I have found two main ways to create your canvas artwork. The simplest way is to buy a transfer kit. You will need to print out the exact size of the photo you want to use on a high-quality laser printer. Follow the directions on the kit. The kit will give you a medium that you will paint over the print out, special transfer sheet and canvas. The second is the iron on transfer; I think these are perfect for totes, shirts or pillows. Although you are limited to the size of the photo you can transfer, transfer papers are easily found in stores. Make sure that photo that you are transferring is the mirror image since you will be laying it face down on the canvas. Then you need to use a warm iron to adhere the photo image.
Using canvas to display your photos will allow you to enjoy them for years to come.
Create A Unique Photo Book As A Romantic Valentine’s Gift
January 26, 2010
Romance isn’t just about candle-lit dinners and boxes of candy with big bows on top. Real romance lies in the personal touch, in showing how much you love someone with a few heartfelt words just for them, or a unique gift that you’ve really thought about and taken time over. We’ve posted several great ideas for Valentine’s gifts already, including a pink Canon camera and a gorgeous canvas print, but if none of those seem just right for your partner, how about creating a unique photo book, celebrating your personal love story, as a truly memorable gift.
Dig out photos from when you first met and once you’ve finished exclaiming over how young you both look, scan them into your computer (unless of course you met recently enough for them to be digital pics!). Find photos that tell your story and bring back precious memories: the amazing vacation you took together, the first house you bought together, your wedding day, the birth of your children, or whatever milestone moments of your lives that come to mind.
Once you have found and selected your photos, it is easy to make a professional looking photo book by laying out your photos together with some text. Write your own messages or add favorite poems and quotes. You can be imaginative and write up your story in the style of romantic fiction, or just add dates and places as more of a factual record, but be sure to include a message of love at the beginning and end, so that your gift has that essential element of romance. You could even add a secret message by placing a single word on each page amongst the photos which put together make up a 20 word message of love. Or create your own unique way of putting together a photo book, there is no limit to the possibilities.
Photo books tend to have a minimum of 20 pages and a maximum of 80, so you’ll need at least 20 photos but can include many more if you lay out several per page. Allow yourself plenty of time to play with the layout and select photos. The biggest problem you’ll have is keeping it a secret from your partner, as you spend hours leafing through old pictures and exclaiming or sighing over the happy memories they evoke!
Mum and Photographer
Put One Of Your Own Special Photos On Canvas For Valentine’s Day
January 19, 2010
Valentine’s Day is just over three weeks away now and if you don’t want to resort to last minute flowers and chocolates as a gift for your loved one, now is the time to start thinking about that special gift that will make their heart glow. When you’ve got young children it can be hard to keep romance alive, but your shared love of those wonderful kids is the glue that holds you together, through sleepless nights and stress, as well as the joys that they bring. The perfect gift for Valentine’s Day could be a gorgeous picture of your young family, celebrating your love by putting one of your own photos of you all on canvas.
There are plenty of other personalized photo gifts that you can create with your photos and many romantic ones too, but a canvas print is one of the most enduring of all. A good quality canvas print can outlast you, its image remaining bright and sharp for a hundred years, so that your grandchildren can still enjoy it. A beautiful photograph of your family, perhaps a mother and baby picture or an informal group of you all, will encapsulate all the love you feel for your family and keep its memory alive for the next generations. How much more romantic can you get than that?
You still have some time left to look through all your photos for the perfect shot, or take a brand new one if you can’t find anything that feels just right. The last day to order for standard shipping is Feb 2nd if you go through Photoworks.
So start thinking about setting up the perfect portrait of your family. Do you just want a portrait of the kids together, or do you want to be in the photo with your partner too? A tripod will make it perfectly possible to set up a photo using the self-timer, but otherwise enlist the help of a friend to take the photo, once you have worked out how you want it. Small kids get bored of having their photo taken very quickly, so make sure you decide on the background and look at the lighting before you get them involved.
Once you have grouped yourselves get your friend to take lots of shots in quick succession and try out some variations. Having everyone looking at the camera and smiling is the obvious arrangement, but try out others too. Attract the kids’ attention and have some photos of you all interacting and looking at each other rather than at the camera. It gives a wonderful intimate feel and can be fun if you get them laughing too. Experiment. Don’t just limit yourself to one session. Try different days and different locations until you get just what you are looking for. You are capturing a mood as well as a likeness, and moods can change from day to day.
Then choose your best shot and put it on canvas for a wonderful Valentine’s gift.
Mum and Photographer
Personalized Photo Gift Ideas for Valentines Day
January 12, 2010
Christmas is over, we’ve cleared away the tree and breathed a sad but relieved sigh that life is back to its dull old routine. No more gifts to buy… but is that true? February isn’t that far away and with it another gift giving day. What are you planning on giving your partner for Valentine’s Day? If you haven’t thought about it yet there is still plenty of time to come up with a special and thoughtful gift. Open up your photo files and then scan the internet for some personalized photo gift ideas.
Here are six gift ideas that leapt from the screen for inexpensive and fun photo gifts for the special person in your life:
1. A photo mug with a heart design – OK, so a mug isn’t very original… but we all use them and you can get some very pretty designs and interesting shapes these days!
2. A mousepad with a photo of you both framed in a heart – It’s another everyday item, but again something that your partner will see every day and which is bound to make them smile.
3. A beautiful cherry wood keepsake box with a photo inlaid on the lid. Put a special photo of you both or of the kids and it will be the perfect place to store precious memories and keepsakes.
4. A silver charm bracelet with a miniature photo charm on it. You can add more charms onto it as you like, perhaps you could add one every year, or else make one charm for each of you and each of the kids, so that the whole family is collected together in a gorgeous miniature photo gallery.
5. A sterling silver photo locket with a monogram on the outside and a photo inside. This could be a wonderful personal gift for the love of your life.
6. If your partner is a wine lover, then buy a very special bottle of wine and make it personal with a wooden photo wine box. Choose a photo of you both to slide into the front of the wooden box with a special message.
For standard shipping, most of these gifts need to be ordered by the end of January, so you still have plenty of time to go through your photo files and create the perfect gift for your partner in time for Valentines Day.
Mum and Photographer
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Snow Makes For Beautiful Art Photos To Put On Canvas
January 7, 2010
Snow is in the headlines, closing schools in the UK, disrupting holiday travel plans on both sides of the Atlantic over Christmas. It seems that snow is just a logistical nuisance, a trick played on us by fickle weather. Kids love snow though, they see it as the magical thing it is, offering us hundreds of opportunities for play, and with its own ephemeral beauty. Next time it snows, grab your camera and your kids and take the time to see snow through their eyes. Snow can be so beautiful and when you look at it through your lens you are bound to get some great photos, maybe even some wonderful art photos that you can put onto canvas to decorate your home.
Snowy scenes have their own mystique, a special atmosphere that makes even familiar landscapes interesting and special. Snow transforms the everyday streets of your town, turning it into a mysterious fairyland. The dullest scene sparkles with a blanket of snow. Capturing a snowy scene on camera gives you the chance to produce gorgeous art landscape photos that will look great blown up large on canvas to decorate your home with throughout the year.
You might want to concentrate on taking landscapes when a new snowfall is still pristine and unmarked, early in the morning, when a few rays of sun break through the clouds and turn icicles to diamonds. Or photograph your kids playing in the snow. Place them as small figures in the landscape to set the scene and then take plenty of photos of them close-up too. Gloved hands making snowballs, cheeks glowing in the cold air, frosty breath curling around them, the exhilaration of a toboggan ride.
The biggest problem with photographing snow is that the camera meter is tricked by so much white and can give you completely the wrong exposure. Plus on a sunny day all the reflections and shadows can look blue and the white balance is thrown out. To help get great snow photos try some of the following:
• Some digital cameras have a winter or snow setting to help get the right exposure.
• On cloudy days you can use the automatic cloudy setting, available on many digital cameras to get the correct white balance, but you may still need to experiment with the exposure to get a good image.
• Try using spot metering to get the correct exposure, centering it on a patch of clean snow.
• Or start off by taking a set of photos where you use the +1/-1 exposure compensation button at half stop intervals until you get a photo that looks just right. Either bracket all your photos over three half stops, or just set your camera to the +/- setting that looks the best on your test shot. But keep an eye on the images you take, as you may need to adjust the setting in brighter or more shadowy settings.
• Of course you can still adjust the color and exposure later in Photoshop, but it helps to get as good an original image as possible, especially when you want to enlarge the picture to put onto canvas.
Last of all, keep yourself, your kids and your camera warm when you are photographing in the snow. Cold can stop the batteries working and create condensation to fog up the lens, so keep the camera close to your body and wrap up warm.
Mum and Photographer
Fun Photo Gifts
December 30, 2009
Are you looking for a Photo Gift that is different? I was shopping for a present for my Mother-in-Law, when I remembered that she had said that she does not have pictures of my sons. Since she lives in another state, I email her pictures to keep up with my sons’ lives. She is not the type of person to print the pictures or upload them to a photo site. I thought a photo gift that shows my sons’ past year would be an excellent idea. I came across a variety of gifts that are fun and useful at the same time.
Home and Office
Looking for a photo gift that is portable? You do not have to settle for a commuter mug; create a skin for a cell phone, camera, PDA, MP3 player, or laptop. This is one way to personalize your electronic device. The stationary department has a large selection to choose from, expand your mind from the photo holiday cards. Use personalized note cards, postcards, stamps, stickers, note pads and notebooks with your favorite photos. Do you want to give a gift that will help organize the office? Purchase a clipboard, desk organizer, clock or mouse pad that has the photo of your choice incorporated in the design. Placemats, trivets, aprons, serving trays, coasters and cutting boards with photos make perfect gifts for people who love to entertain in their home. Blankets, digital photo frames, plaques, photo posters, and photos on canvas are a wonderful way to decorate your home.
Personal Gifts
Ladies always enjoy receiving jewelry; make hers extra special with a photo displayed in the jewelry. Your favorite photos can be placed on t-shirts, boxers, ties and scarves ready to be given as a gift to be remembered. Photo puzzles and playing cards are fabulous gifts for all ages to receive. Most young children enjoy seeing themselves in pictures or their names mentioned in stories. Imagine their delight when there is a whole book with their picture as the main character. This will quickly become their favorite book and one you will treasure for years to come. Are pets a considerable part of the family? You can personalize their collar, leash or food bowl with a picture of themselves or you.
Several of the gifts I mentioned below allow for multiple pictures to be placed on the gift. Some offer the ability for your picture to be placed in a tile design, so the same picture is displayed multiple times on the gift. Since there are so many items that your photos can be placed on, you should have no trouble finding a very personalized gift for everyone on your list.
Buy A Leather Album For Safe Print Photo Storage
December 29, 2009
So Christmas is over for another year and you’re probably still clearing up tinsel and wrapping paper and feeling rather flat after all the rush of the holidays. Why not use this time to take stock of all your photographs. Download everything that you took over Christmas, select the ones you’d like to print, dig out all the prints from the year and start putting together a print photo album, for the safest possible photo storage, before the New Year is upon us.
Keeping prints in a traditional photo album is by far the best way of making sure they are protected, easy to view and accessible to everyone. You can leaf through the pages with your kids, remembering wonderful vacations, fun family moments, memories of when they were younger. If you take the trouble to source archival quality photo albums with acid free pages, your photos will be securely stored for many years to come, so that the albums you have lovingly created will document the family history for the generations to come.
At this time of year you can get some real bargains when it comes to buying yourself some really good albums to store your prints in. The sales have started online as well as in the shops and in particular Exposures have some great deals on their leather albums and photo sleeves.
Treat yourself to a gorgeous Italian leather album that at 14” square is large enough to fit your biggest prints with pages protected by interleaved tissue and which is currently less than half price. Or finally buy that baby album that you always meant to make before your baby turns into a toddler and all those precious moments fade from your memory. Because babies do grow and memories do fade, unless they are captured on camera and immortalized in an album that you can leaf through every so often to refresh your memory.
Don’t worry about creative scrap-booking unless you love that sort of thing. Just buy archive quality print sleeves of the right size for your album and prints and slip each print in. Or buy plain pages and an acid free photo adhesive to attach the photos to the page with a simple layout. Label them with a special acid free pen and you will have an album of memories that will last your forever and bring joy to your children when they are grown too.
Mum and Photographer
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