For me, summer has always been a time for friends. Recently, I had two friends Kristie and Jill come over to my casa. I hadn’t seen them in a while and had missed both their birthday parties. So, I wanted to make something special for them. I created “Amigo Art” for them. You can make it too, it’s easy. First, I selected a photo of each of them.

Since I don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator skills yet, I did a bootleg version of photo manipulation of this picture in Microsoft Word.

I dragged the photo into a word document and then I clicked on the photo twice. A menu popped up that said “picture”. I clicked on that section and a menu scrolled down. From that menu, I chose the “black and white” application.  It transformed the original color photo in to a black and white photo that looked more like a drawing than a photo. The levels of black and white could also be adjusted with a slider tool.

Next, I either pulled text from my friend’s myspace page or I simple typed text on a new word document over and over again. Or really, I just did it once and then copied the text until I filled the sheet! The next part was the fun part. I printed my picture on photo paper and let it dry and then used that same sheet and ran it through the printer again but this time printed the text image for a cool effect.

In order to make it more “shamwow”,  I framed their pictures in cool and chic frames.  I really loved my final “Amigo Art” and I think they did too! Here’s Jill holding up her new art. In her black and white picture, she’s NOT flipping the bird-she’s not that tacky! She’s giving the peace sign. It’s just hard to see!

For more fun and awesome ideas, visit my friend Jill’s site at www.anawesomeaday.blogspot.com/