Photo Fun

Gifts can sometimes be challenging, especially guy gifts.  So when it's time for a gift for my dad, it's hard to find some material thing to give him to convey my love - that is, other than two jars of yummy olives from Corning, California which I picked up on the way back from my road trip to Canada.  (Thanks for your patience while I was away :)  )  My sentimental gift idea for awhile now has been memorable or special photos either made into a card, a book or simply by adding text to them.  

So this is what my Daddy received this week.  

(I left off the mushy hand written words on the back)

I've had a few conversations lately about photo editing and while I will proclaim loudly that I certainly am not the authority on this, I have had people ask how to do this.  So I decided that instead of going back and re-creating something, I'd make something new.  Also, on my dad's card I had used a photo editing program, and I wanted this post to cater to those of you (you know who you are) who just want to do something quick and simple, who don't have a photo editor and are not quite ready to try all the wonderful free ones you can take advantage of online.  I actually use this way a lot for quick cards, gift tags etc.

• Choose a picture from the library on your computer, or you can scan one to your computer as well.

• From the edit menu choose “copy”, and then open a word document and paste your  photo by choosing “paste” from the edit menu.

• From the insert menu choose “text box”.  A + sign will appear.  Click and drag it to give you a text box.  You can then click in this text box and type whatever text you want.

Now I have a Mac, so I’ll give you directions for a Mac.  

If you have a PC, just experiment a little, it’s very similar. 

• From the formatting palette, Ordering will come up under text box, once you have clicked on the text box.  Click on “arrange” and choose “in front of text.”

• Considering the colors on your photo, choose a text color that nicely contrasts and start typing.

• To make things fit, you may need to drag the margins of your text box, and be sure to experiment with different fonts as well as font sizes and colors.

Depending on your photo, you may consider cropping it.  On my dad's card, there were other children in the photo, and I chose to crop them out, since I was focusing on the relationship between my dad and I.  On this photo of my daughter I loved the vastness of the beach and the smallness of her so I left it un-cropped.

Once I printed the photo out (card stock works nicely) I decided that the words were hard to read, so I changed the the font to bold and it turned out much better.

This one's not actually a gift as they usually are.  This one is for me.  This photo was taken on the way to bring my daughter to stay with her dad for the summer.  We stopped in Oregon for two nights and spent some precious summer vacation time on the beach.  I wanted this one on my desk reminding me that for as much as I love her and care about her welfare, God cares more.  He delights in her, will always be with her to comfort her and quiet her with His love, and He even rejoices over her with singing!!  I had not known of this verse till it was pointed out to me by Emily.  If you click on twirl on her blog page it will take you to a beautiful posting she did about it.  "Twirl" by the way has become one of my new favorite words after reading her blog.

So, I am about to conclude my weekend by going to bed early.  I wish all of you a good week ahead. We'll chat again soon.

Affectionately, Miss. Worm