Photo Earring Gift Card — Sum of their Stories Craft Blog

I made a card for a friend recently when I gave her earrings for her birthday. It came out as a fun idea but as she probably doesn't want her photo plastered all over this blog I've redone it with my photo to share with you.

You need to start with a digital photo of your earring recipient. Ideally you want something that's face on and with their ears showing. Something fairly flattering would probably be a good idea too!

I would have liked to get rid of the guy behind me in this picture but I don't have the skills to achieve that so he has to stay. You can see my hair is up here too which reveals my ears.

Now you just play! There are lots of different ways you can manipulate the photo until you get something you are happy with. This is what I tried and the results.

I started with a website called snapstouch

. You upload your picture then choose one of their options to change it.

This is "Painting" with the "Outline" option ticked:

Then this is "Drawing" with the sensitivity on 45:

I did try the "Sketch" option but it was too awful to show you! For a different photo it might be brilliant but not this one of my face. "Unflattering" doesn't even come close!

Next I tried Cartoonize.net which is similar. I found it hard to get something flattering and when I tried to download it didn't seem to work, but you might have better luck.

Next was Picmonkey. UPDATE: Picmonkey is no longer free, I mostly use Ipiccy for my photo editing now. Gotta love Picmonkey - sooo much fun. It's main downside is how long you will spend just messing about!

Upload your picture then try out the options on the left. This is Posterize with number of colours at 24, detail at 81% and fade at 22%:

This is Pixelate, with focal size 0%, pixel size 9, edge hardness 50% and fade 0%:

(not sure I like what has happened to my teeth here!)

This is Holga, blur at 99%, grain at 100% and fade at 0%:

Then I tried photoshop. Although we have photoshop, I can use about 1/100th of its capabilities. It does, hardly surprisingly, have some pretty cool features.

Just open up your photo and then select Filter. There are lots of options to pick and it's pretty instant as you flick between them.

This is "Artistic" and "Colored Pencil":

photoshop artistic coloured pencil wm.jpg

This is "Sketch" and "Waterpaper":

It's quite a nice effect but not really different enough for a card I don't think. (Although if I were just a bit paler I'd look like "flesh" from Doctor Who :-/ )

Whatever you do, don't try "Ink Outline" or "Accented Edges" - I aged 20 years in a second - very scary!

UPDATE: Ipiccy is the main site I use for photo editing these days. There are several options for making your photos look like pencil drawings or cartoons. You click the second icon down on the left, the thing looks like a magic wand and then scroll down to 'Artistic' 'Pencil Sketch' or 'Retro comic' are both quite good.

I'm sure there are LOADS more possibilities out there but they are the ones I tried.

When you are happy print it on decent quality paper and glue to a card blank. Mine is a piece of A4 card folded in half.

Put a piece of blue tack under the ears and use a pin or needle to make a hole. (this just makes sure you don't stab youself or crease the card)