This can be a going away present for anyone: a colleague at work, a class-mate of your child, a church member, anyone.
The gift I made was for our I.S. person at work. Everyone loved him, and knew he really didn't want a present, but they felt sure he would miss the rest of us, and would like a remembrance.
So, I put together a "Remembrance" shirt.
- Get "face-shot" pictures of everyone in the organization, whether its work, school, family, whatever. I did this with a digital camera, but you can use any kind of pictures. Naturally, if you use a regular camera you must get the photos developed.
- If you used a digital camera, print off the pictures, enlarging the heads. The size you enlarge them depends on how many people there are in your organization; the more people you have, the smaller you need to make the heads. If you use a regular camera you need to go to a copy shop and have the photos enlarged & color copied.
- Now you need to cut all the heads out. I used a crinkled edge scissor to help camouflage the irregularity of my cutting — but any kind of scissors is fine.
- What I did at this point was select a saying, a good-bye, or a quote from either the person who is leaving, or something he is aware of. The person I did this for was fond of the little Chihuahua when he was saying, "Here, lizard, lizard, lizard." And he also thought of himself as "Wiz" --(the computer expert). So I made one saying of "Good-bye, wizard, wizard, wizard." This I typed into a word processor and printed out in a nice font. Again, size is determined by how many people you have to fit on. But you do want to make it large enough to be easily read.
- Then I talked to my local Kinko's (any full service copy shop should be able to copy onto a shirt for you), and asked what the largest size area was that they could "copy" onto the shirt. They said it could be as large as 11" X 17". So I found a fairly stiff surface (I used heavy water color paper), and drew out a 11" X 17" rectangle in pencil.
- I pasted my "saying" that I had printed out (could be in color, but to be honest, I really prefer black lettering in an instance like this) somewhere on the rectangle. Although symmetry isn't my thing, for this application I put the saying in the middle of the rectangle (portrait orientation), then moved it up about an inch and a half, or so. This is not critical.
- Then take your little cut-out heads and make a head collage all around the saying, staying pretty much within your original 11 X 17 rectangle. Since the copy shop can always reduce your collage when copying it onto the shirt, this is not absolute or critical either.
- I made one of these collages for the front, then came up with another saying, and did another collage for the back, since we had so many people to fit on. I think its better to do this than to make the heads so small they are not recognizable.
- I took the collages to Kinkos and had them put one on the front, one on the back. When I picked it up, they even put it in a little box for me.
- I wrapped the package (usually use brown paper and stamp or paint stuff on it myself), tied it up with a cloth- type ribbon, (try not to use those stick-on bows — they take away the home-made feel from the gift), wrote "good- bye from the gang" on it with one of those fine tip paint things you buy to decorate shirts with, and let it dry.
- We gave the shirt at the initial portion of our goin-away party the next day. After the package was opened and viewed, I supplied fine-tipped, permanent black markers so that everyone could autograph their picture, or write a personal message. The activity added to the festive mood of the party, with everyone trying to find their picture or think up the best saying.
Remember, this basic idea can be modified to fit almost any occasion !
-Kathy
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