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DIY Large Photo Prints

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DIY large photo prints

DIY large photo prints?  Sort of.  I suppose all in all, this isn’t so much of a Do It Yourself project as it is a Let Hobby Lobby Do It For You project.  But, let’s not argue over semantics.  I had to coordinate this project and it’s pretty cheap— so I’m calling it a DIY.  As you know, I just finished  decorating the teen room, so go see all about it! This little project is just icing on the cake. I’ll tell you all about my thoughts on creating a room for teen/tween, but trust me when I say that art is important.  You want to create a room that is inspiring and expressive.

((Speaking of expressive, see that big poofy red tutu? All I’m gonna say right now is RED tour and Nashville. T-5 days. My girls have voted me mom of the year.))

Emme’s room has a few great artistic pieces,  but to finish the space, we decided to have some oversized photos of her first love, ballet.  We had them printed and then mounted to foam board, for the perfect personal touch.

largeprints2

I first saw Jenny do this a couple years ago and directed my sister to her blog when she wanted to do something similar for her daughter’s room.  There were a few kinks in the mounting process with the thin photo paper wrinkling, so I searched around the internets for more ideas. What I really did was stalk Pinterest.  It has replaced Google as my primary search engine.  I found lots of easy tutorials, but  I decided to check on pricing to have the print shop mount them for me, after reading that Staples can mount them fairly cheap.   The big box store in my town, which shall not be named,  was NOT very nice to me that day.  I wasn’t sure if my favorite local print shop could do them, but I called and he was able to print them but not mount them.  He said Hobby Lobby could do it for about $10-$15, with a high heat process where the photo looks like it is part of the foam board.  So, after I had them printed, I  took them to Hobby Lobby to have them mounted.  They did it WHILE I waited! and just like that, I came home with these awesome oversized prints ready to hang. I’m giddy with how it turned out!  They were about $15 each total, including the printing and mounting. Art made easy.  And cheap.  I embellished the top print with my DIY red emerson flower!

DIY large photo prints

Here are a few tips for creating your own oversized photo prints:

  1. In order to do them this cheaply, you’ll need to print them on engineering paper in black and white.  I price checked my printer and in order to do these in color, it would be about $25 per photo.  I still think that’s reasonable, but black and white worked perfect for us in Emme’s room
  2. Choose photos that would be enhanced by being printed in black and white.  If you’re unsure, just use a free editing program like PicMonkey and convert the photo to black and white and see if you like it.  I edited mine to black and white before I even printed them.  I was very pleased with how they turned out!
  3. Choose the largest size of the photo you can.  I often have to resize photos for my blog, reducing them from say, 4200×2800 to 600×400.  Keep them at the largest size for this project. The more detailed the photo is, the better.  Your print shop  will tell you if the photo size you send  is too small to be printed in these sizes.  I had my photos printed at 36×24.
  4. Email the photo to your print shop (Office Max and Staples both do these, but use your local guy if you have one!) or take it to them on a jump drive.
  5. After the photo is printed, take it to Hobby Lobby and ask them to mount it on foam board.  They can do it while you wait and it looks SO professional.  They use some heating method to adhere the photo onto the board and trim it to perfectly fit.  With your 40% coupon, you can have this done for around $12, including the foam board and the process.  You could buy the materials and do it slightly cheaper yourself, but then I would have to ask, why would you?!  These are so amazing, I promise!
  6. Hobby Lobby sells the sawhorse hangers that can be used to mount the board to the wall.  You could also use 3M hooks or just 3M double sided tape.  One of mine is just taped straight to the wall with the double sided tape because I’ve used 3M over and over without any issues before.  To be super safe, though, just use the sawhorse thingamajigs and hang it right on the wall like a picture frame.

Here’s what those look like, FYI.

DIY large photo prints

Now, please excuse me while I make plans to print oversized photos of my girls, Julissa and Diana!

I’ve got some other great projects and some time tested recipes if you’re visiting from another blog.  Or visit my about page, which features some of my most read posts.  Thanks for stopping by!

Sharing this project with Richella at Imparting Grace and Leslie at Create It Thursdays.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jennifer @ Dimples and Tangles says

    These are fabulous, Edie! And such good timing, I’m about to print some oversized prints for my sons room and was planning to frame them, but that gets expensive! So I’m assuming these are fairly thin and the sides are just like a regular foam board edge? Thank for the HL tip…who knew they did that?

    Reply

  3. Sarah L. says

    Thank you so much. I have so many photos that I need to do stuff with & some I wanted to use/have like you have, but the cost was too high. Thank you for this awesome tip.

    You’re gem Edie!

    I maybe in the Knoxville area this week, any good food restaurants you’d recommend?

    Reply

  4. Jennifer says

    I’ve printed out the engineering prints and mounted them myself with spray glue onto a box “frame” that I built…and let me just say…$12 is TOTALLY worth it! OH MY! I just found out we are getting a Hobby Lobby in Maine and am Over The Moon with excitement. Time for more big photo projects!!

    Reply

  5. kate says

    We went to the Taylor Swift concert in July and I think I danced and sang louder than my three girls! You all are in for a treat! And my tweens would love to have you come and re-do their room..I think I’d better up my game.

    Reply

  6. tara lowry says

    great idea for her room.
    i’m pinning the idea to keep in mind for lydia’s room.

    my boys are hard to actually GET INTO pictures…so it would be hard to get a cool picture of them for their rooms…I’ll have to think outside the box on theirs.

    Reply

  7. Mary Foster says

    Sweet Edie – I am headed to Nashville this Friday night with my girls too!! It will be our 2nd TS concert and she puts on such a fun show…I might be more excited than the kiddos:) Hope yall love it!!!

    Reply

  8. Jeni says

    How fun!! These turned out adorable!! Just a little tip if you want colored prints: a colored 20X30 is $8.99 @ Costco. Not sure if you have a Costco near though. You can’t go wrong with black & white though!! So glad for the HL tip. Gonna have to use that one!!

    Reply

  10. missy says

    How fun!!! I need to do this for my daughter. Artwork can be so expensive, and it’s really hard to do that for a teen that changes her mind fourty thousand times a day!!! haha

    Reply

  11. Kara says

    I normally LOVE your blog. No, let me say I LOVE your blog! But I saw this post today and genuinely asked: “what?”. I have to say I was very surprised to see ads for Disneyland when you wrote an entire post, https://www.lifeingraceblog.com/2012/03/why-im-not-fan-of-disneyland/.
    I haven’t seen anything saying you have changed your views. I get just wanting advertising dollars (trust me I wish my blog would actually “sprout”) but I just have to say this surprised me from you. I’m probably just being negative and judgmental but it did set me aback.

    Reply

  15. Stacy says

    So great and timely for me…I’m redoing my teenage daughter’s room AND her little sister’s room as well. The tips are appreciated!

    AND the tour…my bff and I took our girls and we had a FAB time! We all sang, TS was dressed in NON-hoochie clothing and the opening act was Ed Sheeran…a personal favorite of mine.
    Enjoy the show!

    Reply

  16. Richella @ Imparting Grace says

    EDIE! How wonderful of you to link this awesome project to my little Grace at Home party! 🙂

    I just love these, and I would never have thought of doing this. Mounting things to foam boards is an old favorite of mine. Years ago, I had some cool classic rock posters mounted to foam boards so that they could hang in our bonus room (which was then used mostly for my oldest son’s band practice). I wanted both the walls and the posters to survive with teenage boys around, and the mounting was the perfect solution to that. But using cool photos and making personalized art?? That’s way cooler than posters of Led Zeppelin and the Stones.

    Also, I didn’t know that Hobby Lobby could do this mounting so cheaply and quickly. I am definitely going to check this out; thanks for the tip!

    Reply

  20. Cathy says

    Do you know if Michael’s do anything similar for a low price (although unless there’s a sale, ‘low price’ and “Michael’s” doesn’t usually go in the same sentence in our part of the world!) since we do not have Hobby Lobby in our area?

    This is a fantastic idea!

    Reply

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