Do It Yourself Letter Photography

MY STORY

     It's another challenge at Decorate To Celebrate!  Make sure you check out their blog for great ideas for your next party / gift giving occasion.  DTC Blog

     I have been seeing many catalogs, Pinterest posts on words make out of letter photography.  I always thought these were so cool .  In terms of photos, I have tons so I thought I would give it a shot and create my own on my computer.

     In addition to your photos, all you need is some free software like Picasa and I used Publisher to lay them all out.  No Photoshop used.  I still love neon letters and marquee letters and I remembered I had some cool shots from our visit to downtown Fremont Street and The Neon Museum in Las Vegas.  And I thought with some altering, that these would be a fun way to replicate the look.  On your next visit to Vegas, check out the Neon Museum -- they offer great tours of the history behind various hotel and shop neon signs and it was a lot of fun!  www.neonmuseum.org

YOUR TURN

    I went through the photos from our visit and created a folder of various photos that had letters.

    Then I started going through and cropping out needed letters.  Make sure you do "save as" so you can maintain the integrity of your original photo.  For this project I wanted to form the word "love" and this technique can be used for any word / occasion you have in mind.  Look through all your photos carefully and you will be surprised at how many words you may be able to create.

   Once I felt I had the letters I needed, I dropped them into the Microsoft Publisher program.  I am self taught on this so I am sure there may be more ways to work with it, but it is fun to play around with.

    Work with your letters on positioning and sizing and layout -- I tried my best to keep the letters a similar size so this takes some going back and forth on.

    Once I liked my selection and layout I saved it.  I then went back into my cropped photos and saved these same letters but as black and white versions.  The original color lettering looked really cool, but I was aiming for the black and white style like I had seen in a catalog.

   Since you are happy with the sizing and the layout, just recreate the same file with the black and white version.  Save as a jpeg and that's it.  This would make a great engagement present, wedding gift, use on invitations, etc.  Once you have the layout you can print it out in any format.

   To personalize the print within Publisher, just add a text box and write in the wording you want.

    And that is it, takes a little time but it becomes addictive after a while.  Happy crafting!!!