Displaying Photos: Mat Your Own Pictures

January 24th, 2012 | Posted by KristinG in photo paper - (Comments Off)

If you’ve gone through the trouble of picking out the best professional photo paper and printed it out in stunningly beautiful high quality, why should you let it languish in a drawer or a barely opened photo album? If you take a great picture of your family or a sunset that you absolutely love, you should display it! It should be in a frame in the living room or the hallway.

There’s no reason you need to take it to a store to get framed and matted. You can do this yourself! Don’t believe me? Here’s how easy it is. Grab yourself a mat. This is basically a sturdy piece of cardboard that is usually colored on one side. It’s like a really thick cardstock. Take your photo (which you printed on photo quality paper, right?) and measure it. You want your mat to cover a little bit of the photo, maybe about a quarter of an inch on each edge should be covered. So when you measure the mat, make it about a quarter of an inch SMALLER on each edge. Draw your lines and use a ruler to make sure they’re absolutely straight. Then punch a hole in the middle of the piece you’re going to remove and cut it out carefully using an exacto knife. See? You’ve made a mat! Now that photo will look great hanging on the wall where it belongs.

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Scrapbooking With Professional Photo Paper

January 9th, 2012 | Posted by KristinG in photo paper - (Comments Off)

Scrapbooking can sometimes be a very intense sort of hobby. It’s the kind of hobby that some people go a little over the top about. However, this isn’t really a bad thing. Scrapbooks are great ways to preserve memories and recap a year or specific event. They’re also a great deal of fun.

For those people that do go slightly overboard with their hobby, they only use the absolute best products. They’ve been around the block and know the tried and true products that will make their scrapbook head and shoulders better than the last.

They know that photo quality paper is one of the most important pieces of any scrapbooker’s arsenal. This is especially true when you are printing your own photographs. You should try to look for professional photo paper to give you the best results.

Pictures are the backbone of a scrapbook. Without them, you have nothing but stickers, captions, and descriptions. What is the point of having all of those wonderful ballerina teddy bear stickers if you don’t have any photographs of your daughter’s ballet recital to adorn the pages?

Because you are going to want the absolute best quality products, you should try out professional photo paper.

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Decorate Your Home

January 2nd, 2012 | Posted by KristinG in Inkjet Photo Paper - (Comments Off)

On my commute every day, I pass some beautiful scenery. From the Staten Island ferry, I see the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan Skyline, numerous bridges, and boats. It wasn’t until recently however, that I decided that I should document all of these.

With my simple camera phone I was able to snap photos of beautiful scenery and images. But now that I had literally hundreds of photos (like I said, I see these things every day) what should I do with them? Well, of course I decided to print them on photo quality paper and hang them in my living room.

You can do the same thing. All you need is a camera, a printer, some inkjet photo paper, and a gorgeous subject. Once you’ve got the photos printed, you can mat and frame them. Then distribute them throughout your home or keep them all together to make a great collage.

Even if your commute is long, arduous, and frustrating sometimes, you should still appreciate the beauty in it. If you can remember the gorgeous sunset behind the Statue of Liberty rather than the mean woman who elbowed you trying to get off the ferry, you’ll be a much happier person.

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DIY Holiday Card Ideas

December 12th, 2011 | Posted by KristinG in photo paper - (Comments Off)

I admit that I got started a little late on the holiday cards this year. I meant to get them done right around Thanksgiving but that never happened. I guess I procrastinated a little too long because when I went to the store to buy a pack of cards, I was met with an almost empty shelf. The cards that were left were not my style and would not fit the myriad of friends who do not celebrate Christmas but other holidays.

So I had little choice, it was time once again to make my own holiday cards. I’ve done it before by printing out winter-y photos of my fiancee and me on photo quality paper and sending them out postcard style. That’s certainly a fun and easy way to go! The year before that, I sent out hand painted snowflake cards with hand painted greetings on them. While these met great acclaim, they took up a lot of time!

This year, I decided to go the easy route with my wingdings font on my computer. In my word processing software, I made my own card. The nice thing about this is that I can make it any size, color, shape, and give it any message my little heart desires. It’s completely customizable. Perfect. I printed out my test card last night on matte photo paper and was very pleased with the results. You should try making your own cards this year!

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