Every year Madeline and I come up with some pretty cool ideas for the walls of her dorm room, but this year….I have to say, it might be our best work. On Wednesday we were in the city doing our coffee shop thing* and ended up at one of our favorite spots for lunch. While we had coffee and avocado toast we started looking around at the cool art at Two Hands on Mott Street. It was basically photographs of water with text added to the photos. I snapped a few pics and the rest of the afternoon I searched apps and photos on my phones getting ideas. Turns out I have over 41,000 photos on my phone. probably not a good idea, but I scrolled way back to when we were still living in Southern California and found several photos of water and waves. I cropped out the beach and the horizon so I had just the water. I also used a photo that I took as we walked over the Seine last fall when I visited her in France during her semester abroad. So now that I had meaningful photos of water, I used apps to create the “art.” I used the Phonto app to add the text like California and 2017 which represents her graduation year. Then I used the A Beautiful Mess app and selected a diamond shape from their Doodles and spaced them out over water. Why the diamond shape and California? Diamond is our last name and Madeline was born in California and we lived there during most of her high school years. For the last one we used the ABM app to create a repeating pattern of x’s and o’s just for fun.
I’m hoping to update this post with a photo of how Madeline uses them in her dorm room. In the future we may play around with these a bit and actually frame them in something like the Marin frame from Framebridge. For now she will use 3m poster strips to hang the 16 X 20 photos from Costco. Total cost for four $28. We picked ours up at our local Costco store, but you could have them sent directly to your college student. (Below is a photo of the art at Two Hands that inspired the whole project).
*Are you following us on instagram at CoffeeShopsofNewYork ?
What a great idea. I love the way they turned out and the personalized references on each. I’m definitely keeping this DIY for the files.
Happy Friday, Annie.
xo,
Karen
What a great idea, Annie. I love how you always come up with new inspiration around the city. Your creations are so perfect. I’m tempted to copy!
Hi Karen,
All my California inspiration is now from you! We love the way these turned out!
Have a great weekend!
xo
annie
Love it! Such an easy thing to do and they look great grouped together. I love art that has meaning behind it. So good Annie!
I love this idea! Great job!
Thank you Stephanie!
I just love these prints and the idea seems so cool, and yet so simple. I use Over to put text overlays on to my pictures, but I plan to try the ones you’ve named as well.
BTW- are those clouds hanging from the fixtures in the coffee shop????? Hello! I need those!
I’m going to try the Over app….and yes, those are clouds! You would love Two hands!
What a clever idea. You have a lucky daughter! I will be anxious to see them in her room!