The idea of blowing up a beloved family photo to use as artwork in a space is a good one, but the price can be a roadblock. Ohdeedoh reader Sara Baye figured out a way to get around the hefty printing price tag and make black and white, extra large, over-sized artwork affordabe — like less than $10!
That's right, we said less than $10! How cool is that? Sara discovered that if you head to your local office supply store that has an in-house print shop (she uses Staples) and ask for a black and white "engineering blueprint" then the cost will drop significantly. Here's what she has to say about her latest artwork projects:
It's just a matte piece of (huge) paper with ink, but the print quality is great because it has to print tiny details for architects. The last one I made was a photo of Yankees Stadium and it was 4 feet by 3 feet for just $5.99 at Staples! This image is smaller than that, but was only $2.99 (I'm behind the frame in the photo to show its size and the image is sentimental so it was nice to make it huge).
That's right folks, you can have custom artwork in a large size for less than $3. We'll leave the frame hunting to you, but at that cost, even if you have to pay full price for a custom framing job, the project still comes in on a decent budget. Hit up thrift stores, estate sales and auctions for discounted frames and get busy!
Thanks Sara!
(Images: Sara Baye)
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So you just take in the picture and/or .jpg and they'll print it?
the post asking for submissions had wallpaper with little girls on it, if you were able to line up the photos you could definitly do something like that for cheap with these giant prints (I figured out to use this to make huge prints from a documentary about graffiti artists so they have to use some kind of glue over it to make it waterproof)
oh yea, they also don't care that its a photo not an engineering blueprint that you are printing and you can order it online rather than going to the store and they do it in 24 hours.
On the staples website (probably all of the office stores, i just live near a staples) they have a link to the print shop and you just upload your photo and it shows you the print preview and you accept and pay when you pick it up. I only once went in with the idea and had them pull it up off of my Gmail but they are supposed to charge more for quick prints rather than 24 hours. probably minimal though.
Sweet.
This is great, thanks for sharing Sara!
Anyone know the minimum resolution needed to blow up a photo to something similar to the 4'x3' one mentioned? Thanks!
Most often you'll need 300 dpi to enlarge something to that size. You could however use a program like Rasterbator to make a low res image intentionally pixelated and it might allow you to use something of a lower resolution or size.
You can sometimes use 72 dpi, but the size of the image will need to be quite large (the print shop will probably convert the file for you in house) and it can be switched to the other.
genius. Color-your-own-alphabet print, here I come.
fantastic! we've been wanting to do a quirky kind of desecrated family photo, but didn't want to pay $$$ to blow it up. this is perfect.
I just used the staples website to print a 36 x 48 print for 4.99!
Once I found this I wished I had known about it in college! all my presentations wouldve had a poster rather than a powerpoint and my apartment wouldve had a paper fireplace for christmas to hang our stockings from :)
awesome idea Treereenee, giant coloring book pages!