diy custom name art with photographs

Name art are all the rage right now and really I don’t mind it. I think they’re cute, artistic, abstract and can be really cool depending on the chosen art. You know what I’m talking about, right? The artwork you can buy that spells out a name in photographs of found letters in everyday life.

Well my sister and her husband wanted to use exactly that as their guest book at their wedding. I know, I’m still talking about their wedding nearly eight months later. But I love them and I loved their wedding and I loved being able to help plan it. They put me on the job and I’d have to say that I think their name came out pretty good.

I want to share with you guys how easy it is to create this on your own instead of paying top dollar to buy it. For months and months before hand I was sure to bring my camera with me on outings just in case I ran into “letters.” You find them in strange places! Once I had all the photos I created a word document. Yes, no special software or program, a simple word document. I edited each photograph first using iPhoto on my Mac, but another option is the free photo editing site PicMonkey. Once I cropped and edited the colors to make sure all the blacks, whites and grays were alike I think simply opened my word doc, set the page to the size we wanted the final print to be and dragged in each letter.

I put each letter into the doc and then sized each one to be the exact same and lined them up in order. Using the options in Word I created a border around all the letters. Then using a text box I added their names and wedding date.  If you place the text box over the border lines it’ll cover the line and make it disappear. Adjust the text box to whatever size you want.

Done! It was complete, very simple. We had it printed at Staples on one of their fancy printers in the size of our choice. I think it cost us around $15. So between that and the frame it was a whole lot cheaper than custom ordering the same thing.

We framed it up and they used it as their guest book at the wedding and had everyone sign it and write notes around it. This is totally where my mom would be all like “Wait, Lindsey you spelled it wrong.” And I would flip a lid and she’d be all, “Just kidding!” Yeah, she still does that and it still gets me every time.

I’m bummed that I don’t have a photo of the final result, with all the notes around it, but it looked really cool and it was a great alternative to a guest book. Something you can actually hang and read every time you walk by it hanging in your house.

Did you guys do anything other than a traditional guest book at your own wedding?

P.S. I didn’t do a great job of showing how I made this because I did it so long ago and didn’t take screenshots. However, if it’s something you’re interested in please feel free to reach out to me and I’m happy to work with you to help create a similar project!