It’s fantastic to capture every adventure, vacation, and family moment with your digital camera, but what do you do with all those amazing images to make sure the memories live on? Well, there are lots of creative ways to share your snaps—all you need is a little crafty inspiration and a versatile, high-resolution photo printer.
Here are our top five favourite photo display projects, all of which are easy and inexpensive to complete using Canon’s great PIXMA and PIXMA PRO printers.
- Build a gallery wall
Photo by Momtastic
This DIY is great for highlighting years of family photos. You can pair old photos of your grandparents with images of the kids as they grow, and add to the wall over the years.
While this project doesn’t take too much planning, it is important that you decide on a design before you start putting nails in the walls. A good way to ensure everything turns out the way you want is to lay your frames out on the floor and figure out your layout from there. Then, use paper cutouts to place each frame perfectly and make sure everything fits.
Having a good quality inkjet photo printer at home, like Canon’s PIXMA PRO-100, makes this project way easier. It’s important to make sure your images are varied so the wall really pops, which is why the PIXMA PRO-100 is so handy. You can print borderless, high-resolution images in colour or black and white, create images in a range of different sizes, and print on a variety of paper stocks from glossy to matte. It’s the perfect tool to help make every frame unique.
For a more details about this project, check out Canon’s easy 10-step tutorial on how to create a stunning gallery wall with a PIXMA Pro printer. You can find the video here: canon.ca/pixma
- Make a scrapbook
Photo by DIY Ready
While scrapbooking may be passé in some circles, we think the form is perfectly suited for cataloguing travels—and a much better way to show off vacation photos than making someone sit through a slideshow. Scrapbooking is a great way to store keepsakes, make notes about your trip, and highlight the photos you’re really proud of. Passing the book among friends and family is an intimate experience, and you can always add reflections or images down the road.
Plus, making a scrapbook is fun! You can get creative with how you display images from your trip by making patterns out of repeat images, cutting them up into interesting shapes, or just experimenting. A home photo printer will open up a lot of options in this regard (not to mention save you some money!), which is why we recommend using something like the PIXMA iP7220 Wireless Inkjet Printer. It produces lab-quality images, and can print a 4″ x 6″ photo in 21 seconds, so a minor crafting mishap won’t derail you. Plus, it lets you experiment with photo effect, like fish eye, soft focus, and blur background before you print so you can make special pages stand out.
- Create unique frames out of upcycled objects
Photo by Funky Junk Interiors
You can use retro window frames, mason jars, or wood pallets to create unique photo installations to display all your memories. Old windowpanes are particularly suited for a project like this (the glass is built in!), and you can get really ambitious with the size and finish on the frame.
If you’re going for a more retro or rustic look like in the project above, you can edit your photos, or use a filter, to ensure they have a unified style. Programs like My Image Garden—which comes with Canon’s PIXMA printers—allow you to apply various effects to your photos, and are great at categorizing images by date or subject so you can easily figure out which images are going to work best together.
Once you’ve collected and edited your images you can print them quickly (like, 30 seconds quick) on your high-definition printer and then all you need to do is adhere them to the window frame. And that’s it! It’s a great way to uniquely display your favourite photos, and it only takes an afternoon to assemble.
- Hang photos on a line
Photo by Mommo
This project is great for special occasions like weddings or birthdays, or as a year-round display over a bed or couch. You can use twine and clothespins when hanging in the kitchen, a string of twinkle lights to brighten up a room, or create an artful display using coloured string to make a geometric design. Best of all, these dangly displays are easily adapted to a theme or holiday.
All you need to complete the project is the string of your choice, some clothespins or paperclips to attach the photos to the line, and a wide selection of beautiful images. You can start with them spread out and then add photos as you take them, or rotate out photos depending on the time of year.
The best printer for this project is the Canon SELPHY CP910. The light and portable wireless compact photo printer comes with AirPrint capabilities that let you create beautiful, borderless 4” x 6” prints directly from your mobile device. Plus, it’s super simple to use and only takes 47 seconds to print an image. What’s not to love?
- Transform everyday objects into mementos
Photo by Beauty and Bedlam
Putting your favourite images on household items is a subtle way to remind everyone that you are a photography master. Coasters, T-shirts, and sachets are just a few items you can easily put a photo on, all of which work well as gifts or party favours. While putting a photo on items requires various techniques, few are hard—or time consuming—to do.
You can use decoupage glue when mounting photos on ceramics—like the tiles used to create the above coasters—and get special iron-on paper to add them to T-shirts or pillow shams. Canon PIXMA printers can print on a large array of paper, including iron-on sheets, and also allow you to resize and crop images with their supporting My Image Garden and Creative Park programs. Plus, they can print images from your iPhone and Gmail, so it’s easy to collaborate with friends or use a favourite Instagram pic in your project.