Photo Birthday Card

First I have to thank my sis-in-law for inviting me to be her first guest blogger. She's so crafty, and I'm proud that she asked me to contribute to her site. Warning: this is my first ever blog post. Now that the stage has been set, on to Act I.

When I was pregnant, besides giving us all the usual unsolicited advice, many people felt the need to warn me about how drastically different life was going to be. “You’ll wonder what you ever did with your time” was a phrase I heard a lot. In the midst of all the changes that were happening to my body, the doctor’s appointments, job changes, additional sleep requirements, and the busyness of preparing for baby, I thought that my life was already getting crazy and my free time had already been severely limited. Oh how naïve…kinda like when I was admitted to the hospital and the nurse asked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain of your life, how bad are your contractions?”  A 10, definitely a 10.  Four hours later I was longing for those easy contractions. On the other side of a miracle, the world looks different. Perspectives change. Love changes.

Now when people give me advice, “Enjoy every moment” and “They grow up so fast,” I really try to take it to heart. I’m trying to make the most of every moment and make special memories for our family. The birth of our daughter has been a great source of inspiration to me, and I’d like to share one of our projects that I believe captures the candid, joyful everyday moments that I’m blessed to share with our little girl. I made the photos into a card to give to my husband (another great source of inspiration!) on his 28^th birthday this year. I hope this project serves to inspire you as well.

I believe that good preparation can give you an edge in just about every area of life. School, work, a speech, cooking, and especially a project involving a 6 month old. Yes, preparation is key.

 I started by purchasing a package of plain white onesies. I had a couple other projects that required them, so a three pack was perfect for me. Plus it never hurts to have extras when your subject could involuntarily stain her outfit (back, front, top or bottom) at any moment. A friend gave me some felt scraps that she had leftover from her one-year old's birthday party.

I started by dressing Naomi in her onesie and using the old finger measuring trick to see approximately how large the letters should be to fit nicely across her belly. You know, the trick where you hold your fingers apart at the right distance and try to transfer them to something else before you squeeze them together or open them up any farther than when you took your measurement? Very technical, I know. Although the perfectionist in me is cringing, no, screaming in agony, having an infant has taught me that getting it done is more important that getting it done perfectly. Anyway, I cut the first "H" out of the felt and then used tape to affix it to the onesie for a test letter. The size looked just about right.

Next I cut out the other letters using the “H” as my template for the height and width. A shopping trip with Naomi’s grandma provided the needed downtime to finish cutting out all the letters. Baby’s sleeping, someone else is driving – instant free time for projects! I laid the letters out in the backseat as I finished each one to avoid putting the same color letter too close to another letter of the same color, and I was careful to cut each of the letters that were repeated from different color felt. I’m still allowed to be a little OCD.

I prepared for the photo shoot by laying out all the felt letters and placing a few pieces of rolled up tape on the back of each one. Once all the letters had their temporary sticking solution, I put the baby in her onesie and propped her up on our bed during the middle of the day when the sunshine would provide plenty of natural light through the big window in our bedroom. I noted the time of day in case I had to do a re-shoot or needed to finish another day. That way the pictures would have approximately the same lighting conditions.


I used my Cannon Rebel Digital XT on automatic to take all the pictures. The flash never came on because of the good natural light. I attempted to work quickly so that the light would be close to the same from start to finish. This was somewhat of a challenge with a squirmy baby. Between trying to crawl away, eat the felt letters, eat the tape, and grab the camera, it took about an hour to take all the pictures. I took several with each letter just in case one didn't turn out well. As it turned out, my first attempt to get through all the letters yielded the perfect combination of candid shots from the first smiles to the final squirms.

 

I downloaded all the pictures from my camera to Picasa, picked out my favorites, and cropped them to approximately the same size. I found some 8.5" x 11" card stock that you could fold in half to create a personalized card and 8.5" x 11" photo paper. Then I created a Word document to paste each picture on an 8.5" x 11" page. I changed the margins to 0.1" all around, and sizing the pictures to 1" x 1.5" made them fit on the page perfectly. I printed the pictures on the photo paper, cut off the excess, and pasted it to the front of the card stock. A mushy personal note later, and it was instantly the best birthday present I've ever given my husband. Now her dad and I can enjoy all those little moments forever.