Great DIY Photo Gifts

I'm a big fan of giving gifts that involve photographs. Recently, my aunt started asked me for recommendations for making photo gifts for the holidays. It got me thinking, aside from the kinda lame/kinda everywhere photo keychains - it's hard to find AMAZING gifts that involve photos.

Over the years, I've spotted some great ones and wanted to share them with you.

PHOTO GIFTS YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF

• Alphabet Photo Postcards - Take a group of friends and have someone photograph you all together making each letter of the alphabet with your body, print each photo/alphabet letter as a 4 x 6 postcard and mail a "secret message" to someone far away; tutorial with pictures hopefully coming soon!
• Mailable Photo Mosaic - This is a similar project that comes with its own tutorial; This way you are mailing a large photograph in pieces via postcard
• Photo Blocks - With any photo, you can make an awesome puzzle-esque paperweight that looks very artsy on any coffee table
• Vector Graphics/Vector-Graphic Inspired Paintings - Check out my post and also VectorMagic for a neat way to artsy-up your photos
• Create a photo journal or notebook - A customized notebook tutorial that will make you wish you'd never dropped $20.95 on a journal at Barnes & Noble
• Pop-up Photo Cards - Another great photojojo tutorial, make your photos pop with insanely cool pop-up photo cards
• Photo Fabric Quilt - A recent post on Living with Annie, this duvet cover has panels made with printable photo fabric sheets
• A Frame-able Photo Mosaic - Using free software on the net, you can create your own photo mosaics. I've linked a free service on here.
  

PHOTO GIFTS YOU CAN BUY

• Snapfish Photo Books - I made one of these for Gus for Christmas one year with the theme of travelling. We were long-distance at the time but had made many trips together - each section of the book showcased a different place we'd been to and the book was themed with the e.e. cummings poem "i carry your heart with me"
• Photo Soda Bottles! - Jones Soda, famous for crazy flavors of soda, will take your photo and customize bottles of soda for you however you'd like. Examples of use - weddings, bat mitzvahs, birthday gifts, etc.
• Photo M&M's - Most people know by now that you can order customized M&M's with whatever text you'd like on them. They've gotten even more creative and now- you can put your face on an m&m... then eat it! Awesome!
• Creative Canvases - PhotoWow has a great assortment of effects and genres they can add to your favorite photos to put an artsy spin on them

Got any good photo gifts/projects/sites?
Please pass 'em along.