DIY Digital Alphabet Collage

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a blog that referenced the works of photographer Leo Reynolds. Leo has made much of his work available for people to download and use with very limited restrictions (personal use, like for this project, is a-ok). Leo has provided HUNDREDS of photos of each letter of the alphabet (including punctuation) that you can download in whatever sizes you want (75 x 75, 100 x 100, and 240 x 240 pixels will probably work the best for this project). 

You can check out Leo Reynolds' Letters Collection by clicking here.

To view and download the letter you want in your desired size, first click on the thumbnail image of the letter (d'oh). It will open a new page. Click the large image of the letter one more time (the cursor will be a magnifying glass icon). In the page that opens, click "view all sizes" in the top right corner. From there you will be able to select which size you want and download or take a screenshot of the image in that size.
 The fun part is, you can download whatever letters you want and piece them together using an image editing program to create words or phrases. Here is the one that I made: 

As you can see, using all the different types of letters creates a funky, artistic look. I chose "dream big or go home" because I thought it would be inspirational to look at every day. Some other ideas include your name, song lyrics, or a famous quote. The best part about this project? It was totally free! 


If you want to get fancy shmancy, feel free to use Photoshop or whatever nice imaging software you have. I just used plain old Microsoft Paint, and with pretty awesome results, imho. In fact, I didn't even download the images - I just opened them in the size I wanted in my browser, used Print Screen to copy them, pasted the full image in paint, and then used the select tool to cut out the letters and move them to the desired spot. Pretty elementary, but I am very pleased with the results. 


The frame this is displayed in is actually a record album frame I had lying around, and I didn't even have to pay for the print, because my friend Brad works at his dad's printing company and printed my image out on high-quality photo paper for me. Thanks again, Brad!

If you don't have any friends who work in the printing business (heh), I'd recommend using kodak.com or a similar service that allows you to order digital prints online. Or you could save it to a flash drive and take it to a store like CVS pharmacy where they have photo kiosks. Or, if you have a nice color printer (unlike me), you could even just print it out at home on high quality paper.

The size of mine turned out to be right around 10" x 10" and probably would not have cost more than 5-8 dollars to order a print.

 

Here's one last picture of my project, from a side view: 

 

Pretty sweet, eh? For an almost free project I'd say it turned out even better than I expected. It really adds a funky flair to a space, and the best part is that you can personalize it completely. If you are looking for an inexpensive way to make some custom art for your walls, you should definitely give this project a shot!

I tried to make the instructions as clear as possible, but if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section. Thanks for reading!

xoxo

JEN