This will probably come as pretty much NO surprise, but let me just say: I’m kind of the queen of handmade/homemade gifts.
Gift giving is 100% my love language when it comes to showing affection for those whom I care about.
That said, when my boyfriend and I’s one year anniversary of dating was approaching, I was so excited and started thinking about a special gift at least a month in advance. (I’m pretty extra - I understand.) I wanted to make something that was special and represented our year of adventures together. And thus, the “doodle portrait collage” was born.
The “doodle portrait collage” as I’ve come to describe this fun piece is a combination of doodle drawings in pen and colored in with colored pencils on regular drawing paper.
My process for creating this piece first began by me creating a list on my phone of everything I thought I wanted to try to include in the piece (it was a pretty long list)! I had worked on compiling the list for a couple of weeks before I put anything to paper because I wanted it to be as fleshed out as possible so I didn’t realize at the last minute that I forgot something big and then not have accounted for space to include it.
When making my list of things to include, I was thinking of:
Places we have traveled together (Chicago, Raleigh, New York, and our home states of Pennsylvania and Indiana)
Things we individually love (although, I’ll argue there’s a lot of overlap with things that we individually love and things we both love) including breakfast sandwiches, champagne, basketball, pizza, sunflowers, weiner dogs, Beyonce, LeBron James.
Things we love to do together: go to concerts, cook, ride electric scooters, etc.
Funny memories and inside jokes. One that I included on ours is a snake that says “SSSSSTEPHEN” next to it. It’s a memory of when I picked up a rubber snake at a thrift store when my boyfriend and I were driving from Pennsylvania to Indiana over the Holidays and used it to prank him. We then had this rubber snake with us for the remainder of the trip and decided to give him the name “Stephen” (but you had to pronounce it like SSSStephen in a snakelike manner). We almost lost him when we stuck him in a friend’s hotel bed on New Year’s Eve and we thought they left him at the hotel…but he made his way back to us at the next get together. In case any of you were ultra curious about the snake. ;)
My rule, generally, was that if there was a way to easily visually depict an item on the list, I’d go for the doodle over just writing words. But obviously with concepts like “Communication,” and general things like “friends,” it was easier to just write out the words for those. I wanted most of the doodles to be obvious what they were, so if I didn’t think I could do the doodle justice, I would just write out the word.
I started by doing a pencil sketch of our cartoon portrait in the center, including both of our pets, Jack the cat, and Noodle the dog. And then just got to work checking things off my list as I included them.
One thing I did learn, towards the end, was that I couldn’t run my doodles up to edge as tight as I did because it became somewhat difficult to find a frame that didn’t cut pieces of the doodles off. I believe the frame I ended up going with was more of a “document holder” than a frame, so it didn’t cut anything off. It wasn’t necessarily what I had envisioned for framing it, but it was the only one that didn’t cut things off.
After delivering this one to my boyfriend and sharing it on Instagram, a dear friend of mine out in Colorado actually commissioned me to create one for her and her boyfriend as well.
Here are some pictures of their collage (and its evolution):
Long story short, I really loved creating these projects and how creative and personal they are for the person giving and receiving it! If you could use a handmade, thoughtful gift for a loved one, shoot me an e-mail and let’s chat!
