Hello. Yesterday I posted some photographs of my cat Eddie (here). And with this post I will show you some things I made using the photographs. I have used pictures of my pet, however you can use any picture that you’ve taken. Also, as I am writing this at Christmas time, there is a holiday bend to what I have done, but these ideas can be used for any occasion.
I used Photoshop to edit my pictures, however having used the excellent on-line (and free) services of Picmonkey.com, you could also use that program to make these things. I just used my home ink-jet colour printer and regular white paper to print up the images.
I showed the method to make these greeting cards last year (here). In a nutshell, I made a fairly wide black border around the picture and then printed up two photos per page. Then I carefully cut them out. I chose pre-made card bases that came with envelopes but you can make your own bases too. The photographs are actually stuck to the card with two sided tape and then the photo-corners are added. So, the photo-corners are only for looks … they don’t actually attach the picture to the card. I finished the inside nicely by attaching a plain quality paper inside with a line of glue-stick. But, since I am prone to making mistakes when I write in cards, I wrote my message on that paper before attaching it to the card.
For the gift-wrap, I used three different images, which I randomly placed on the page (if you’re using Picmonkey, use the collage maker, with or without a border, depending on what looks better. Since I used Photoshop, I used the eraser tool, with fuzzy edges (can’t think of what that’s properly called right now) and went around each picture, before I copied and pasted it.
This paper will best be used to wrap smaller packages, but could be taped or glued together if you really wanted to use it for something larger.
For the next three items, the two gift tags and the gift box, I used glue-stick to attach the images. You’ll get a better result if you cover the entire back of the picture with glue, so to do this, place the picture face down on a piece of scrap-paper and cover with glue, running right off the edges onto the scrap paper. Note that you will want to use a fresh piece of scrap-paper every time because there will be glue on the ones you’ve already used.
Another gift wrapping idea was to recycle a box that had the original store name printed on the top, but the rest was plain. First I blacked out the store name with a marker that matched the colour of the box, so that the store name would not show through the finished product. Then I attached the photograph to the top of the box, creating a new box that can be reused.
Here are a couple of gift-tags. For the smaller one, I just cut an image out of the wrapping paper and attached it to a mailing label tag, to which I had first glued on (with glue-stick) a square of black construction paper. For the larger one, I used a larger image, like the ones I used for the card, but a little smaller. I glued it to a slightly larger piece of construction paper, and made a hole it the corner using a hole-punch.
And in case you’re wondering about Eddie and his card for Nick … Boycat began giving gifts in our household several years ago. The first occasion was for our wedding anniversary. Nick and I had agreed that we would not be exchanging things because we were going for the ‘gift of experience’ with a dinner out at a fancy restaurant. But then Eddie surprised me with a nicely wrapped package which contained a beautiful wooden salad bowl, which we use all the time. He chooses good presents.
…. um, well on second thought, perhaps not all the gifts the cat gives us are good. We could really pass on some of his choices.
Thanks for taking a look. Any questions about any of these things, please ask away in the comments.
:) loulou
