This Christmas I framed 50 mini bird photos and sent them to loved ones
Author
Jeff Mann
Date Published
I have watched and photographed birds for fun for the last ten years. I took 45,000 photos, observed 440 species, and made countless memories. For Christmas this year, I made tiny framed prints of more than 50 of my favorite bird photos and sent them to friends all over the country.
Jeff with many of his mini framed bird photos
Finding mini photo frames 🖼️
Finding tiny photo frames that were nice and not antique-y took some searching. I ended up finding an assortment of cute ones in-person at Michael’s.
Most of the frames were 2.5” x 3.5” with a few odd shapes thrown in.
A handful of various mini frame styles I found at Michael’s
The printing 🖨️
Some of the photos fit straight into the frame as-is, but many needed to be cut to size or taped gently to small mats inside the frame. Some frames required cropping the prints with scissors and taping them to the frame mat.
A handful of tiny bird photos about to be put into various frames
Framing the birds ✂️
Some of the photos fit straight into the frame as-is, but many were cut to size, or taped gently to small mats inside the frame. I used the frame back or glass to preview and cut to the final size.
Isn’t that frame cute? Perfect for a bird with a snack.
The photo labels 🏷️
My initial plan was to print labels with a label maker for each frame. That was slow and expensive, so I quickly pivoted to designing them all at once using Excel and formulas written by AI.
The freshly printed bird species labels on sticker paper ready to cut and apply
I made each label two inches wide
To automate making the label creation, I downloaded a CSV of my eBird photo data, and filtered it to only include the printed birds. I then asked ChatGPT to write a Excel formula to generate the labels using that data.
1="🐤 " & Sheet1!C7 & " | 📆 " & TEXT(Sheet1!G7, "m/d/yy") & CHAR(10) & "📍 " & Sheet1!P7 & ", " & Sheet1!N7 & " | © Jeff Mann" & CHAR(10) & "🎄 Christmas 2024 | " & ROW(A6) & "/42"
Honeycomb paper and bubble mailers for a safe journey 🐝
The honeycomb paper was fun to wrap the frames with, and it provided a nice unwrapping experience.
Honeycomb paper is so satisfying to stretch around the frames. ASMR realness.
The quick holiday card insert 💌
These double-sided holiday cards were printed at Walmart the night before, using a template from their site. My original plan was to handwrite blank cards but I ran out of time. 😆
This printed holiday card was a last-minute addition to the project to so I could avoid handwriting 50 blank cards at the end.
Post office drop-off 📫
That morning was spent weighing and creating shipping labels on the USPS website. It beat waiting in for the postal worker to process each one!
We worked up to the wire and barely got the packages to the post office before they closed.
Jeff with a hill of finished packages
Mubark and Jeff, feeling accomplished at the post office
The little framed birds are beginning to arrive 🦉
It is delightful to get pictures and hear from my friends as they receive their mini birds. More pictures of the tiny birds in their final homes to come!
Merry Christmas! 🎄
Comments from the community
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Vonnie
Apr 29, 2025
What a wonderful post. I'm going to try some of your ideas.