I love taking pictures and I am somewhat crafty, so I thought that it would be fun to make my wife a cargo bag with pictures of one of her dogs all over it. I had a photo project book with plans and thought it would be relatively inexpensive to make, and so started off in earnest. True, I had not used a sewing machine since the 7th grade and true, I had never used the complicated photo software that was required to get the pictures the exact size that I needed, but I knew that I could do it.
I started out by downloading some free photo editing software. Loaded my pictures. Struggled with the software for a few hours (thought it would take a few minutes) but prevailed.
My wife and I picked out some fabric for the bag, which came to about $15. Spent another $20 on some photo canvas. The kind that you can use in a home printer. Except, as I was to find out, MY home printer.
I tried and tried to get the printer to take the canvas, to no avail. OK, I thought, I’ll just take it to Kinko’s. Maybe I can supply them with the canvas, which was letter size and they could just print a color copy on it. Wrong. They would not use my canvas, but told me they would be happy to print it out on their machine, at a cost of $100.
Once I start something, I finish it, but I was going to be damned if I was going to pay Kinko’s $100 to print the pictures. I decided to shop around. I went to another printing place and discovered that a) no one wanted to touch my photo canvas and b) it really costs $100 to do what I wanted.
Still, on principal, I was not going to let my photo canvas go to waste, and I wasn’t going to pay $100 to get the job done. I started to research printers and found one for $150 that would take the photo canvas. I wasn’t happy about getting it, but it had all sorts of whistles and bells and I could then use it for other projects, so at least I’d get something for my money beyond a onetime printing.
Excited, I got home and printed out the pictures. Had to throw out the first canvas as it was printed in the wrong mode and didn’t look right. Printed out the rest. Used up almost all of the ink. Once I laid them out side by side, I realized that they were the wrong size. I was out of ink and out of canvas, so now I had to order them, at a combined cost of $60.
One week later, the new canvas came in. Printed everything out, the correct size this time. Now the only thing left was to sew. In other times, I may have attempted to do this myself, but finally, I realized that I was in over my head and so deferred to my wife, who has much better skills in this area.
My wife finished the bag, and it came out very well. While the initial idea was to make it for her completely, this ended up being a nice way to do it because we got to work on it together.
So, in the end, we made the bag, properly and completely. The path there was not easy and it was not cheap, but we did not give up. I think that is important as there are too many things in life we start but never finish…
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Awwww. I wish you would have brought your photo canvas over and just done it on my printer. I wouldn't have charged you nearly as much. :)
ReplyDeleteI printed pictures of my dog and then sent them to a person in Milwaukee who makes handbags. I love my bag, but it cost a lot, too.
This is how I avoid not finishing some things - but having someone else do them in the first place. Not a very good blog message. :)