Making Your Own Engineering Prints for Your Walls.
This is it. My favorite time of the year. Yes, I know that’s a bold statement, but it truly is. The time when all of my Christmas decor comes down and I get a fresh start on my decorating.
I decided I wanted something simple that involved my little loves and their smiling faces. So why not put a giant photo of each of them on the wall?
Here they are! Beautiful, smiling and all for under $100! This project is super simple and can be done in a day if you wanted to.
So, here’s how it all went down. Er, up!
I spent roughly $80 on the frames. They are 24x36 photo frames from Michaels. They had wood, black and white, but I liked the warmth of the wood tone for my living room. I will link the ones I bought and some similar frames I considered below. They are all around $20 a frame.
Since I wanted 3 frames to go across my long wall, I needed 3 different photos to go in them. Here’s the process for the photos.
- A light, plain background is best for the engineering prints. These prints are low quality, which is why they are inexpensive to print, so creating a simple background will help keep your image looking nice.
- I put our daughter in front of a well lit wall, and took a million photos of her smiling. Here’s the original photo straight from my phone and the one that I sent to the printer.
3. Because I wanted the photo to be simple, I opened the photo in Photoshop and cropped the picture so she was toward the bottom, with a lot of white space above her.
4. I then made it black and white and bumped up the brightness. I also made sure my photo was 24x36 and bumped the resolution to 200.
Once you have your photos ready, you’ll need to find a place to print them. I originally called our local Staples, however, they told me they would not print a ‘photo’ as an engineering print and that I would have to pay $30 or more for a poster print. I didn’t want to pay $30 and I didn’t want a poster print, so I called a few other places. I ended up printing them at our local FedEx store for roughly $5 a print.
I’m really happy with how they turned out. The paper is super thin, so be careful when handling them. You’ll want to be sure your frame has a backing, otherwise you will want to mount the print to a foam board.
I’ve been lovingly gazing at them for days. Our living room just got a whole lot sweeter.
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Christine Ann Nielsen on Mar 12, 2019
brilliant cropping of the photos to create simplicity!
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Diminutive on Mar 15, 2019
Very clever, eye catching and unique. Great job.
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