Old Family Photos Made New on T-Shirts

What to do with old family photos? Since my grandparents and parents have passed, I have become the keeper of old photos. I have thousands of photos in albums, boxes and drawers. Some are even dated back to the 1800s.

I wanted to create something new from old family photos for my two brothers and myself as a Christmas present. I found a wonderful photo of our parents in their early years of marriage and chose a cute picture of the three of us as young kids.

Picking the photo was no easy task since my mother took hundreds of pictures of her three children. She wanted to capture every moment of us growing up.

I used a local t-shirt screen printing business that transferred the pictures onto t-shirts. Since I gave at Christmas time, I chose long-sleeve t-shirts.

I placed my parents’ photo on the front of the t-shirt along with their names, Harry & Doran. I added the photo of my brothers and me on the back, along with our ages at the time.

My brothers were blown away seeing us and our parents at such young ages. It meant FAMILY in the most heartfelt sense of the word. My brothers and I experienced a sentimental moment where we got lumps in our throats because we missed our parents.

Turning the t-shirt around to see three smiling kids with snowballs in our hands – that made us laugh!

We have worn our matching t-shirts when we go out to eat together. Strangers stop us and inquire about our t-shirts, and there’s always an inevitable “Awww” after they learn the meaning behind the images.

Some people snapped our pictures so they could use the same thoughtful gift idea for their siblings or other family members. A few people even knew exactly what photo they were going to use!

We can’t wait for the day when we run into someone wearing a one-of-a-kind t-shirt who copied our thoughtful gift idea using old family photos!

Everything I learned about life, I learned from the stories of my very uncommon family, beginning generations earlier right up to the present!