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Mrs. French Bulldog, Orange County Age and Occupation: 28, Administrative Assistant & Interior Design Student Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Purchasing Analyst Engagement Date: November 8, 2008 Wedding Date: August 2009 Venue: Bernardo Winery About Me: I've lived in Atlanta, Dallas and Laguna Niguel; although I've lived in Orange County, CA most my life, I'm a Southerner at heart. I work full time for a Commercial General Contractor (aka my father) and I go to school for Interior Design at night. I love modern design, music, wine, crafting, DMailing, my family, my Westies, and of course, Mr Frenchie! Mr Frenchie and I met 3 years ago on Match.com and have been best friends ever since. I love his "old soul" and how he laughs with his whole body, among many other things. We are planning our summer wedding at the winery near his hometown, just 45 minutes south of Orange County.
About Mrs. French Bulldog

… or how I made my inspiration board. :)

I wish I owned Photoshop or something like that. I don’t even own anything more than a trial version of PowerPoint, which I’m sure you could use make an inspiration board, as well. So, because I don’t own these fancy programs, I used the two I do have: Microsoft Word and IrfanView.*

IrfanView is a free and easy-to-use graphic viewer and editor I downloaded years ago to easily edit my photos for MySpace. I use it almost daily to email Mr. Frenchie or friends pictures I’ve seen on websites, because most of their work emails block images that I just copy and paste.

Step 1 - Collecting the photos - If you’re anything like me, you’ve collected a ton of inspiration photos. The hardest part of this step for me was deciding which photos to use, which forced me to decide on a set theme.

*Note: for this step I HIGHLY recommend bookmarking websites instead of just saving the pictures to a file. This makes sourcing your photos MUCH easier.

Step 2 - Editing photos - I’ve found the easiest way for me to edit my photos was to “Print Screen” and paste into IrfanView. The “Print Screen” button basically copies whatever is in view on your screen to your clipboard. In order to see what you’ve “copied”, you have to “paste” it into a new document, or in our case, program.

What my screen looks like in IrfanView…

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial Screenshot11 screenshot1

Now I want to just have a pic of the cookbook. To do that, I’ll click and drag a box over the desired area:

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 24 screenshot2

and select the Crop feature under Edit (ctrl + Y).

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 33 screenshot3

Now, just save the file, and repeat.

Step 3 - Inserting files - In Microsoft Word, you’ll go to Insert > Picture > From File…

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial Insert1 insert

and select a photo, and it will appear on your paper. It may show up bigger than you want it to be, so just scale it down.

Next, right click on the photo and choose “Format Picture”.How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 51 format

Under the Layout tab, select “Tight”.
How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 61 tight1
This will allow you to move and manipulate the photos easier. When an image is set on the Tight layout, it will look like this:
How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 71 tight2

Repeat this step for all your photos and arrange them how you’d like.

Here is a quick one I did with items from our registry:

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 81 regboard

When you are finished, you can do another screen print…

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 91 screenshot4

… and crop out your board.

How To Make an Inspiration Board :  wedding diy tutorial 101 regboard1

Ta da!

Top: Kate Spade Larabee Dot, Spode Baking Days Deep Dish, Crate and Barrel Duo Salad Servers
Middle: KitchenAid Mixer, Crate and Barrel The Newlywed’s Cookbook, Crate and Barrel Madison Dinnerware
Bottom: XOX Crock with tools, Target Canary Print Armless Chair, Target Preps Mixing Bowls

*For some odd reason, Polyvore doesn’t work for me, but if that works for you, I imagine this could be even easier.

Have you created an inspiration board? Upload them to the gallery; I’d love to see them!

Tags: diy, tutorial |
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12 Responses to “How To Make an Inspiration Board”

1.
Soon2BeeMrsLewis
Member
Soon2BeeMrsLewis (message)  695 posts, Busy bee

gimme your registry, i want all of those items. love me some green! :)

thanks for the tips though, very helpful!

 
2.
RoddyBride09
Member
RoddyBride09 (message)  2,961 posts, Sugar bee

Thanks for the tips.. I always wanted to know how to create one!

 
3.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Yorkie (message)  1,291 posts, Bumble bee

This is going to come in SO handy! I’m ashamed to say I’ve made it this far without an actual inspiration board. Thanks, Frenchie! :o)

 
4.
lreighard1
Member
lreighard1 (message)  642 posts, Busy bee

What a good idea!

 
5.
Lillindy
Hostess
Lillindy (message)  7,974 posts, Bee Keeper

I created a huge one long ago and used a similar method. I still can’t figure out how to use Polyvore and when I made mine I didn’t know how many other ways there are to make them, like using Flickr.

 
6.
honeymyheart
Member
honeymyheart (message)  764 posts, Busy bee

this really helps :) thanks!

 
7.
Guest Icon
Guest
Jess

I’m curious why Polyvore doesn’t work for you (I work there). If there’s a bug that makes it not work for your computer or browser, we’d love to fix it for you! Send me an email if you have some time.

 
8.
LatteLove
Hostess
LatteLove (message)  5,587 posts, Bee Keeper

great tutorial frenchie! I used publisher, but they are so easy huh?!

 
9.
miss mouse
Bee
miss mouse (message)  5,844 posts, Bee Keeper

Picasa from Google is another (free) and easy way to make inspiration boards. The Mac version is still in its beta version, so it can be frustrating sometimes. But if you have a PC, it’s great! Love your board, btw.

 
10.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Taffy (message)  3,104 posts, Sugar bee

Great tutorial!!! :)

 
11.
Guest Icon
Guest
cara

I’ve always wondered about this! I’ve been doing mine in MS paint, copying images into there and moving it around — but I bet this’ll let me make bigger images, awesome! Thanks!

 
12.
Coccinelle
Member
Coccinelle (message)  286 posts, Helper bee

Thank you!

 

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Mrs. French Bulldog
Mrs. French Bulldog

Mrs. French Bulldog, Orange County Age and Occupation: 28, Administrative Assistant & Interior Design Student Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Purchasing Analyst Engagement Date: November 8, 2008 Wedding Date: August 2009 Venue: Bernardo Winery About Me: I've lived in Atlanta, Dallas and Laguna Niguel; although I've lived in Orange County, CA most my life, I'm a Southerner at heart. I work full time for a Commercial General Contractor (aka my father) and I go to school for Interior Design at night. I love modern design, music, wine, crafting, DMailing, my family, my Westies, and of course, Mr Frenchie! Mr Frenchie and I met 3 years ago on Match.com and have been best friends ever since. I love his "old soul" and how he laughs with his whole body, among many other things. We are planning our summer wedding at the winery near his hometown, just 45 minutes south of Orange County.

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