Because I can't do anything small, a year of gifts wasn't enough for Billy Webb.
In considering ways to decorate his party, I thought about plastering the walls with a million photos of yesterday and today, but ultimately decided it would be overkill given my 15-minute video was full of pictures. So, instead I decided to do something bigger and better. I called up his mom and asked if she would dig through the archives and pull out a few vintage Billy Webb shots. She was kind enough to grab 25 slides {like my childhood, many of his younger days were preserved on slides} and I checked them out on the slide viewer. It was so fun to see young Billy Webb! Two instantly caught my eye. A boy and his bike. They would be perfect. Suddenly my decorating idea turned into a great gift - a giant print.
Off to the photolab I went.
Of course, it's hard to get a true taste of slide images without printing. So the lab converted the slides to jpg's and printed out a few samples. I loved them! They worried the image might be too blurry to make giant - 36x48 - but I loved it. ...it's vintage, he's moving, I don't mind blurry, I said. But, in the end, I took their advice, kind of, and settled with a 24x36 print. And, in the spirit of all things fun, I asked them to print it on metallic paper, for an extra added touch. It turned out amazing! I wish I had stuck with my gut and gone bigger!! Either way, I was in love and I knew Bily would be, too. According to him, his childhood spent nary a day indoors. If you were looking for him, he was outside on his bike.
For ease, I had the lab mount it on foam board and two 3M removable velcro hangers later, it was on the wall in all it's faboulousness. Along with the second image I had done at a smaller 11x14.
Quick, easy, fun. Art! Everthing I like and more!
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