Photo Fun

Have you done anything with those holiday pictures yet? Me neither. I have a terrible habit of taking pictures and then just letting them hang out on my computer for months before I do anything special with them. Today, though, I felt like doing a project. I didn't stick to holiday pictures, but this project is fun with any pictures you have.

There are plenty of places that will turn your photos into magazine covers, but you don't need to pay anyone to do it for you. It's pretty easy to do it yourself. I don't have any fancy schmancy photo editing software, either. I'm still using the software that came with our first desktop computer. It's antiquated, but I know how to use it. The computer itself melted one day a few years ago, but that's another story. If you have software that will let you add text to pictures, you're good to go. Because I don't know what editing package you'll be using, I can't give you any specific instructions, but I can give you some examples of what I've done.

I took this picture of the frozen shore of Lake Huron in Lexington, Michigan. You can't even imagine the temperature with the wind coming off the lake.



I love this one! Thanks to my father in law, I have some wonderful old family pictures. I wasn't sure how I would feel about a project done solely in black and white, but I'm so glad I tried it.




Ok, I may have gotten a little carried away with this one, but what else can you do with pictures like this? I took this picture at an outdoor summer concert. Nice view, eh?



Now, what do you do with the magazine covers that you've created? You could, of course, print them on photo paper and frame them. My favorite way to use them is to print them on magnetic sheets (available at craft stores) and make refrigerator magnets. If you scale down your creations, you can get six smaller magnets or four larger ones per sheet. Whatever you do, have fun!

One last bit of Willoughby wisdom - Take a lesson from me and be sure to back up all of your digital photos on a flash drive or a disc. We lost several years of precious family photos because of a crashed computer.