This Valentine's Day I wanted to make something personal to give my sweetheart as a gift. The downside: it had to be cheap, easy, meaningful, and fun. The fact that it's something I'd like to hang on our wall or set out for display is just the icing on the cake!
So what fit the bill? A personalized eye chart. You might already be aware that awhile back we revealed a freebie love quote eye chart, but while it's cute and fun I wanted something much more personal for a gift for the love of my life. So I personalized it.
Cute, huh?
It reads: "Tom and Chelsea 06 01 2008", which is our wedding date. Of course, I thought it still looked a bit nekked, and decided to add in some more personal dates along the sides, much like a real life eye chart.
Except instead of representing vision acuity, these numbers represent important dates in our lives. It's pretty much a timeline of our love and life together.
Mimicking the number of digits on a real eye chart, the numbers on the left are the 2-digits numbers for the month over the year, and on the right I added 4-digits numbers, with the month and day over the year.
Each date represents an important event in our life together - for instance, the first set of dates - 08/12/2004 - was the first day we met, followed by the date that Tom proposed to me, the day we were wed, the day we added Barley to our family, the date we bought our first home together, and the current date.
Now Tom won't have any excuses if he forgets our anniversary!
It only took me a few minutes to whip this up in Adobe Illustrator (although since it's just text I'm sure you could use Photoshop or even a word processor), and in case you're looking to make your own the font is Courier, which I believe comes pretty standard on any computer.
Once I got the text lined up how I liked it, I added the dates and just printed it out. Easy peasy!
Of course this doesn't have to be a gift just for a spouse on Valentine's Day, it could be gift for anyone, anytime. How cute would it be with a special quote for that someone? How about as a housewarming gift for new homeowners, with their new address on it? How about a fun and unique gift for some newlyweds? In fact, I had a reader email me with an idea for displaying it at a wedding, and I thought that was a unique and fun addition to memorialize the event, and even serve as art for the new couple's home once the big day was over!
While this might not be everyone's cup of tea, I think it was a perfect solution to my gift-giving problem, and I can't argue with the price!
Did you give gifts to those you love for Valentine's Day, or do you celebrate a different way? Are you a chocolate-and-roses type of person, or do you crave something a bit different? Let's talk gifts!
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Ha... great minds think alike. Monday I was working on my own version of eye chart... something. I don't have it ready yet for a post, but it will be up soon.
ReplyDeleteI found that "Dillenia UPC" and "Rockwell" are even better fonts for this chart (in my opinion). They are both on more recent versions of Windows.
I forgot that we share a wedding anniversary...18 years apart of course. That's really cute, and it would be a perfect wedding gift.
ReplyDeleteHow very creative of you! I'm usually horrible at getting gifts for my husband, isn't that sad?
ReplyDelete