Cut Out Photos

For my son's second birthday he wanted his party to have a transportation theme. For his cake I made an amazing Sailboat Birthday Cake I had seen in a Martha Stewart Kids years earlier...it featured a handmade paper sailboat atop an amazingly iced cake using Martha's Seven Minute Frosting to resemble soft blue waves. You can see a photo of the cake here if you're curious...and yes, mine did look just like that...the frosting is really fool-proof to apply! OK, back to my son's party...

As we were all finishing up our best rendition of the Happy Birthday song, my son stuck his two pointer fingers in the air and blew out his candles. We captured this cute moment of August contorting his face to blow out his candles while showing his age in fingers, along with the simple paper boat on the cake and his two candles (one lit and one already feeling my son's damage). It immediately became an iconic photo to me.

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to display it and then, upon visiting a friend's house in Georgia, I was reminded of her cut out photos of some of her special moments with her children. I loved that the pop out technique removed any busy background so as to only focus on the captured image. So that's what I did with his second birthday photo...and I love it!

A simple Google search of "photo cut outs" will give you a ton of options of companies to use. Because I like the simple base and the prices are more reasonable than some, I like presentsofmind.com and zazzle.com. Ordering is a bit old school with Presents of Mind because you have to print out the order form and mail it in. But if you don't have an electronic image of your desired pop out, that will be just fine. If you're anxious to get started, go with Zazzle because you can upload your photo on their site and turnaround will be quicker.