70 year memory table runner

long time no post, but if you follow me you are used to that!
i'm not going to apologize either...you know where to find me for more regular life updates...facebook, instagram blah, blah, blah.

anyways, my mother in law turned 70 on may 3rd and my sister in law and myself (being the only two girls around) wanted to do something to celebrate her in a big way...my sister in law loves surprising her and wanted to do a surprise party. we started planning this event in january as we all have very busy schedules and trying to coordinate everyone is like NASA level coordinating. lol.

i told her i would handle the decor part if she wanted to do the food and as we got closer to the date and the plans were coming together, i had an idea to do a long table covered in kraft paper with a photo table runner.
i fibbed and told my mom in law that one of the kids had a school project about family generations and i needed to go through all of her picture albums/boxes.

here is a sorta kinda tutorial on the photo table runner...which did turn out really cool and was the centerpiece of the party...

you need:
pictures
iphone/ipad
muslin fabric
hot glue gun
a movie

step 1.
decide how long and wide you need your runner to be.
gather pictures...DO NOT use the original pictures...i went through 1,000's of pictures, it took me a week. 70 years of pictures and my father in law was a very avid document-er of life! what i did was take pictures of the pictures with my iphone, or my ipad (because my iphone ran out of storage). because the quality of iphone cameras now they are good enough to print 4x6's with no issues.

step2.
i wanted my runner to have a very uniform look, so i turned every photo black and white on my phone which you can easily do with the edit options that come on your phone already or with an app. i also had to crop some the images on my phone.

step 3.
upload all of the images to only site that has the options for white borders, square prints and 4x6's and best quality/price for printing persnickety prints like i said i wanted my images to look very uniform so i wanted them to have the white border on them and persnickety does that at no extra charge plus they have square prints and the more pictures you order the more money you save. seeing as i was ordering almost 400 prints that made a big difference.

step 4.
get muslin fabric the length and width you need for your runner. our long table was 30 inches wide by 18 feet long so i made my runner fabric 12 inches wide by about 25ish feet because i wanted to touch the floor on either side of the table hanging over. plug your hot glue gun in, put a movie on. i sat on the floor with a piece of wood (its supposed to be a shelf i think, i used it as a popcorn bar top at a party i threw) under the fabric. and just start laying the pictures down and put a small amount of hot glue on the back of each image and adhere it to the fabric. then repeat like 388 times, lol.

really its not very hard, i watched walk the line and by the time the movie was over i was finished. i let the images hang off the edge so you don't see the fabric at all...the pictures overlapped each other...i mixed the square prints with the 4x6's and i didn't go in chronological order. as i would finish a section i would gently roll it up in front of me... a big roll not a tight roll. that is how i transported it to the party location as well...and not a single picture was damaged or bent. then after the party they actually just peeled off the fabric because i didn't use a ton of hot glue so now they are in an album.

the other thing that would be a cool added touch but we ran out of time, i was going to use a white oil pen to write on the kraft paper table cover some of the dates of the images, or quick description of certain images and maybe some doodles

 

my mother in law was surprised and cried and that's always my goal (...to make people cry i mean that in the best way, lol) so i did my job and accomplished my goal.