Saturday, July 10, 2010

Most clever Family gift, ever!





Every year at Christmas our family gives loads of hand made, personalized gifts. Through the years the wonderful gifts of scrapbooks, family calendars, custom tee shirts, paintings, custom items and CDs of my sister's beautiful singing have been mind boggling. Yes, the ladies of the fam are a totally creative bunch!! One year my mom made afghans for everybody. That is dozens of afghans, dude.

The guys are clever too, but in a less crafty, more blue collar guy kind of way; as in rebuilding a truck engine, remodeling houses, welding and fabrication,motorcycle building, building an airplane, panning for gold, paving a highway, fine tuning a chain saw, building a custom computer and yes, two of them have mad skills with aircraft maintenance...one is in the Air Force and the other is a retired engineer from the Space Shuttle program.

So, back to the "Family" picture at the top. This last Christmas my daughter in law got the idea and my son, the mad computer genius, implemented her request and the whole fam got custom family pictures, totally unique to each person's identity.

Look closely. Look very very closely.....




Do you see what I see? Dozens and hundreds of tiny family portraits taken from our vast catalog of family photos. They must have worked with THOUSANDS when you consider that each portrait was skewed specifically to the recipient, with my mom and dad getting shots of their vintage wedding photos and their 50th wedding anniversary as well as all their kids and grand and great grandkids. My youngest daughter and her husband got shots of their wedding, their two dogs and their high school graduations. In fact, everybody's pet dogs and cats made it into the frames. We are a group of photo taking fanatics and we share our albums back and forth and hither and yon. Almost every shot we've taken over the years made it into these fantastic collages. Even the not so flattering photos were included. No two gifts were the same!



My parents' gift spelled out the word "Legacy." Every family's word was their last name. Each framed gift was unique and we spent a whole lot of time playing "spot the faces" that Christmas day.


I tell you what, if I can talk my son into writing this up in a tutorial, you can BET I'll be posting it here! It would be an awesome project for just about any occasion. In the meantime, we all agree that in the Christmas gifting category, my son and his wife win hands down. The rest of us are going to have to kick it up a notch to top this!

Thanks for stopping by. I'll be linking up to the blog parties on my sidebar, so come visit them with me. There are always LOADS of fun projects to be found. I've been offline since Monday, but now I'm back. Sorry I missed some of my favorite parties but now I'm off to link to my Thursaday favorites. Thanks!

24 comments:

  1. What a charming personal gift. I've seen huge "paintings" made with tiny pics. This is a wonderful use of the technology.
    Kathy

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  2. I so need to know how your son did that! that's really amazing! :)

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  3. please beg him to write this up! i am in love!

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  4. Lovely! What a special gift!
    smiles!

    www.blackberryvine.blogspot.com

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  5. What a thoughtful and unique gift.

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  6. Wow. I can only image how long that took! What a great gift :)

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  7. Oh my gosh! This is the sweetest, most thoughtful, creative gift.Ever. It turned out just perfectly!

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  8. That is amazingly cool! I LOVE IT!

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  9. This is totally awesome! I think this would be a perfect Christmas gift for anyone!

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  10. i hope you can talk him into doing a tutorial! i don't think i could figure it out on my own. i would love to make something like this for my fam.

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  11. One of the most amaazing projects that I've seen since I found blogland!...really!...I'd love to see the tutorial!!!
    Sharon@KeenInspirations

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  12. Holy COw!! I can't even begin to imagine what a huge undertaking that must have been! You must be much loved:)
    Visiting from justsewsassy.com

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  13. what a fantastic gift...i can't imagine how many hours they put in to that. what a great wedding gift that would be as well, with pictures of the couple throughout the years.

    i'm so glad you stopped by and commented on my cloche. thanks!

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  14. i love that! what a fun/special gift!

    love your blog and thanks for the nice comment on mine:)

    i am your newest follower!

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  15. What a clever idea!!! I love how this turned out!

    Thanks for linking up!

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  16. What a great gift and something to treasure forever! I know there are computer programs that you can use to make those, so maybe that's how he did it.

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  17. Those have got to be the coolest things ever. I so want one!

    Thanks for linking up today.

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  18. I'm your newest follower from New Friend Friday!
    LOVE the picture!! Must have taken a LONG time!!
    Would love if you'd follow me back!
    Jennifer @ The Craft Barn
    http://thecraftbarn-ny.blogspot.com/

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  19. Great gift!! It's soo hard to give gifts year after year...I know that sounds awful, but I'm just not that creative...so this is an AWESOME idea...thanks for sharing! And yes, a tutorial is in order!!!!

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  20. Ann,
    That is incredible!!! So much work.

    Tanks for coming by my place. Be sure if you make a lantern cloche you let me know. I would love to brag on you!!

    blessings

    Barbara jean

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  21. brilliant idea!!!! What a lovely gift!
    xo maureen

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  22. What an awesome gift your son made you! I sure hope he agrees to a tutorial...I'd love to know how he did this!

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  23. How totally cool is that!! I've never considered doing something like that but I can kind of see how it is done...Mmmmmmmmmmmmm...

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I love your comments and read every one. They let me know if I'm on a good track with my blog. Thanks for stopping by!

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