Quite a while ago I was watching Shark Tank, or it could possibly have been Dragon’s Den (the Canadian version). There was a company that did Alphabet Photography. You know me… I am too cheap to buy something like that. But of course I thought to myself surely I could do that on my own… So I set out to do it. First I started looking for things that matched the letters in our last name. I took photos when I saw things. (For instance two saw horses together made an ‘M’, some trees formed other letters, iron work made an ‘E’, etc). Walmart had their free shipping on prints again so I got 8 5×7 prints shipped to my home for $4 something. I got 8 instead of 7 because one of my letters was questionable. I had two options for my V, one was landscaped which I wanted the other was portrait. Luckily my first choice just fit with the matting.
Next I needed something to put the photos in. I wanted a collage frame, but there aren’t many 7 picture in a row collage frames out there. So I did the next best thing. I went to the dollar store and bought 7 $1 frames. I got 5×7 frames that were matted down to a 4×6.
I wanted a collage frame. I didn’t want to just hang up individual pictures. So I arranged the pictures, measured for accuracy, and then epoxied them together.
I added my photos. It was flimsy and heavy so I added a wood slat on the back to stabilize it. I don’t plan on changing the pictures so I just glued the slat down. Then I hung it up. I totally love it, my engineer said it has nice pictures but he wouldn’t know it said our last name if I didn’t tell him… I know what it says and I love it. Total project cost… less than $13.