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The holiday season is a wonderful time for connecting with those you love. Some families are brand new and formed just this year. Other families have decades of history, traditions, stories, and lessons to pass down. It doesn’t matter whether your family is made of relatives or chosen friends who you hold dear, this time of year is set aside to celebrate and honor those you love.
If you are scrambling for family holiday gift ideas, know that you aren’t alone. Plenty of people wait until the last minute or need help with gift-giving. At Memory Fortress we have you covered. Here are seven gift ideas using family photos and one gift you can download and give immediately.
1. Digital Picture Frames
Picture frames are great for highlighting valuable memories – like the moment a partner proposes or the first picture of a baby – but traditional frames are limited to one photo. Digital frames will cycle through dozens of photos throughout the day so there is always a new, beautiful memory to look at.
Explore different digital picture frame options if you are looking for gift ideas using family photos. Modern digital frames will sync to your smartphone so you can add and replace any photos you want. This might be a great gift idea for a relative who is far away. You can display new images on the frames each morning so your loved one has something to look forward to.
2. Picture Puzzles
Some of the best gift ideas using family photos also involve group activities. Consider creating a puzzle that has a key family memory on it. You can look for basic puzzles of 50 pieces for children or buy advanced 500-piece puzzles that the whole family can put together.
While you assemble the puzzle, talk about the memories around it. For example, if the puzzle is a beach picture, laugh about almost getting stung by a jellyfish while waiting for the photographer. If the memory is a graduation photo, share your memories of attending school and the different classes or activities you participated in. This is a great way to keep your memories alive.
3. Photo Ornaments
Instead of sending Christmas cards this year, consider creating holiday ornaments with key family memories. There are several DIY ornaments you can assemble yourself, where you simply slide a printed image in between two glass panes. For more advanced options, look for ornaments that print images onto the orbs or carve pictures into wood.
You can create one family ornament each year to highlight a key milestone or you can put together several ornaments with friends and family. This is a fun way to start a holiday tradition along with generating gift ideas using family photos.
4. Design a Calendar
One of the best things about gift ideas using family photos is that you don’t need hundreds of images to create a valuable gift. For example, you can design a calendar with a new family memory each month. All you need are 12 unique photos that highlight different members of your family.
This is a great gift for kids who recently left for college and might feel homesick for their parents and friends. You can also order multiple copies of these calendars and hand them out to different relatives. Eventually, it can become a family tradition to order a new photo calendar each year.
5. Turn Photos Into Commissioned Art
If you have a particular photo that means a lot to you, consider reaching out to an artist to turn it into a new medium. For example, an artist that specializes in Star Wars-inspired drawings can redraw your photo in their style. A watercolor artist could create a hand-painted version of the photograph. This is a great way to further elevate a memory while adding art to your home.
6. Photo Art
You don’t have to create unique items using family photos. Instead, you can look for unique ways to display them. Pick up some twine and photo clips to create strings of images throughout your home. You can hang up photo strings in your office, bedroom, living area, and even your kitchen. This is a great setup because you can switch out the photos seasonally – with photos from the pumpkin patch in October and prints from summer camp during June and July.
Just make sure you have digital copies of any photo prints you hang up. You don’t want your only prints to get damaged by sunlight or moisture, which could cause you to lose those memories forever.
7. Family T-Shirts
This is one of the best gift ideas using family photos if you have a reunion planned this year or enjoy taking vacations or trips together as a group. These t-shirts make your family visible to others so you don’t get lost. If you have a Disney trip planned, you can take a group photo in the matching shirts and then find your relatives in the park throughout the day. This is also a good way to keep your kids safe because multiple relatives will look out for them.
Consider adding a photo of your last family get-together on the shirt. You can also add a single photo of a relative if you want to honor them. For example, find a photo of your grandparent if you are celebrating a major birthday milestone with them.
Bonus Idea: Give the Gift of Photo Digitization
If you know someone who has boxes of photo memories from decades past, consider helping them turn these prints into digital files. It only takes a few minutes to buy a gift card for Memory Fortress that enables your relatives to turn albums, videotapes, scrapbooks, slides, and film rolls into digital media.
Too often, memories get lost and forgotten because they are hard to get to. Your wedding album might be stuck in the back of your closet while video memories seem lost because they are in VHS format. You can send these items to Memory Fortress and our team will turn them into easy-access files.
Learn more about Memory Fortress gift cards and buy one today if you need to give someone a last-minute gift.
We digitize everything right here at our facility in metro Atlanta, processed by US citizens.