fbpx Skip to main content
Category

Misc

Photo Craft Ideas to Do Together: Creating Memories with Your Family

Capturing beautiful moments in photos is great, but do you know what’s even better? Using them to create something special! Whether it’s with your spouse, parents, siblings, kids, or even grandparents, getting creative with photo prints is such a heartwarming way to bond. Do you wanna know what’s the best part? You don’t need to be a pro at crafting—just a little creativity and lots of love! Here are some interesting and fun ways to turn your cherished photos into beautiful momentos.

1. Dream Board: Manifesting Your Best Life Together 

We all have dreams, and sometimes, we just need a little push to bring them to life. A dream board (or vision board) is the perfect way to visualize the goals you have set while surrounding yourself with the people who matter most. Imagine sitting down with your kids, or spouse, flipping through old photos, and choosing images that inspire your future. Maybe it’s a travel photo reminding you to plan that long-overdue family vacation or a picture of a happy moment that motivates you to create more of those experiences.

How to do it:

  • Gather old and new photos that make you feel joyful and motivated.
  • Cut out words, quotes, or images from magazines that align with your dreams.
  • Arrange them on a board, adding stickers, washi tape, or little doodles to personalize it.
  • Hang it somewhere visible to keep those dreams alive!

This activity is great to do as a family as you have meaningful conversations around past achievements and future goals. Try doing this once a year and you can look back on how far you and your family have come. 

2. Journaling: Capturing Moments Beyond the Picture 

Photos tell a story, but words can bring them to life in an entirely new way. Imagine sitting down with your child or partner, flipping through the journal, and writing about what each moment meant.

How to do it:

  • Start with a simple journal (or an Accordion fold) and photo prints.
  • Write down memories—what was happening in the photo, where was the location, how you felt, any moments surrounding it. I like writing the dates for each photo so that I can easily look back and go “Oh, I remember that day!” 
  • Add decorative touches like dried flowers, stickers, or colored pens to make it uniquely yours.

This is such a great way to bond across generations. Grandparents can tell stories from their previous generation, while you and your children can document your own journey. It’s also a beautiful way to pass down family history and wisdom through words and images. Younger children who may not remember the moment can look back and experience it once again through the flipping of the journal. 

3. Photo Frame Scrapbooking: A Personalized Touch to Your Decor 

Scrapbooking is always a fun activity, but why not take it up a notch and make a personalized framed art? This is perfect for making meaningful gifts to your extended family by adding a sentimental decor to their homes.

How to do it:

  • Get a plain picture frame (wood, acrylic, or even a shadow box works!).
  • Print out photos that hold special memories—perhaps one with your kids when they lost their first tooth, or a nostalgic picture with your parents from years ago.
  • Decorate the frame using small embellishments like pressed flowers, beads, or meaningful quotes.
  • If you are using a shadow box, you can add little trinkets that remind you of the moment (a dried flower from a trip, a train ticket, etc.).

Every time you look at it, you’ll be reminded of those good times. Plus, creating it together makes it priceless!

4. Driftwood Photo Display: A Rustic & Sentimental Touch

Want a unique way to display your photos? A driftwood photo display is not only beautiful but also a fun, interesting craft to do with your family. It brings a warm, rustic vibe to your space while showcasing your favorite memories in the form of snapshots.

How to do it:

  • Find a nice piece of driftwood or a sturdy branch (you can even buy one if needed!).
  • Print out your favorite photos in different sizes for a creative touch.
  • Use twine, string, or mini clothespins to attach the photos to the wood.
  • Decorate with fairy lights, dried flowers, or shells for an extra touch.
  • Hang it in your living room, hallway, or anywhere it can be admired.

This is such a fun way to display a collection of family moments, travel memories, or even a timeline of your kids growing up! Feel free to add or remove any photos as time goes by.

Why These Crafts Matter

The beauty of these activities isn’t just in the final outcome—it’s in the time spent together, the laughter shared, and the stories told along the way. Whether you’re creating a dream board with your kids, journaling with your parents, or crafting a driftwood display with your siblings, these moments become core memories too.

So, take those photos, gather the special people in your life, and start crafting. Because while photos capture memories, what you do with them keeps those moments alive.

Retouching: What kind of editing do we do?

If you’ve ever wondered why photographers can’t send your photos instantly right after the shoot, this is because the photos need to go through a few processes before reaching their final result! When we shoot, we shoot in a format called RAW, which is not suitable for general use. So first, after the photo shoot is completed, our photographer will transfer the photos to the computer and select the best ones. Next, it gets transferred to an editing software, where our editor would do a basic colour correction on every photo and then export it in JPEG format. We often have clients ask, What do we mean by basic colour correction? Does it include removing pimples, wrinkles, eyebags, etc… Unfortunately, these requests fall under extra editing requests, as they require a longer time and effort to edit. If we do this for every photo, you may not receive your photos within the promised timeline!

Basic Colour Correction

Colours in RAW format are usually lifeless-looking, but it is still the best format to further process in post production. So it’s absolutely a must that we bring some life to the photos! A basic colour correction is essentially adding and balancing out the brightness, colours (saturation), colour temperature, highlights, and shadows of the photos as well as cropping out excessive backgrounds to make the images look more centred. A few toggles here and there will instantly make your photos look more vibrant and captivating!

Have a look at the before (left) and after (right) samples here!

Extra Editing

We do offer extra editing services for those who wish to have a “picture-perfect” photograph. This service usually comes FOC when you order framed prints and albums with us. Alternatively, you can add on this service for your favourite selection of images at a minimal additional fee.

Extra editing includes:

  • Skin smoothening
  • Removing skin blemishes
  • Minimizing eyebags/dark circles
  • Minimizing wrinkles
  • Removing flyaway hair
  • Removing any background distractions
  • Removing any scars/wounds
  • Face/Body slimming
  • Minimizing double chins
  • Whitening teeth
  • Make-up retouch (add blush, lipstick, etc)
  • Minimizing creases on clothes

We hope this helps to clarify our editing services. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any more questions!

 

 

A Christmas Gift Guide

In recent years, Christmas has become a festivity celebrated by many (doesn’t matter what race or religion you are). I mean, who doesn’t love gifts? It’s the season of gifting! But gift shopping can be stressful (we know), and most of us don’t have the luxury of time to go out and shop for them. Fret not, we live in a digital world where everything, including gift shopping, can be at your fingertips. So here’s a list of Christmas gift ideas for young families that we’ve compiled for you busy bees, which you can get by heading to their website or dropping them a quick message. These are all Malaysian-owned brands, so you’ll be supporting another family or small business by buying from them!

The Kraft Store

The Kraft Store offers beautiful and essential handpicked goods such as bath towels, toys, feeding accessories, and books for your little ones. They have a good selection to choose from, so go check out their website to place your order.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekraftstoremy/

Link to purchase: https://thekraftstoremy.cococart.co/

The Flight of Imagination

Together with makchic, we have created an endearing photo storybook experience that combines professional photos of your family taken by Stories, whimsical illustrations by Munsya Rahman, and a heartwarming story by makchic’s Kimberly Lee about the power of creativity and the joy of creating moments and memories. Created for children between the ages 3-8, this book will become a family heirloom worth treasuring. Don’t miss out on our current promotion we’re running for this (ends 31st December 2023).

Link to find out more: https://stories.my/flight-of-imagination/

Dough Little

Dough Little playdough kits are safe to play by children starting the age of 1. Their playdough boxes and kits are based on open-ended play concepts, whereby there aren’t definitive instructions and expectations while the child is at play. Children are encouraged to explore each box and create something amazing within the given theme (examples: create habitats, food, characters, vehicles etc).


Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dough.little.playdough/

Website: https://www.doughlittle.com/

Mils and Key x Stories Newborn Gift Pack

Malaysian owned, Mils & Key’s mission is to curate and create safe, functional, sustainable, and stylish modern baby products. Coupled with a photoshoot that can be used for a maternity, newborn or family session, these gift packs that include Mils & Keys aesthetic looking yet functional products are a great gift for the expecting mom. ⁠

Link to find out more: https://stories.my/product/mils-key-gift-pack/

Continue Reading

2023 Year End Reflections

We don’t remember days, we remember moments.

This quote is at the forefront of our Stories’ Lifestyle website and is one that speaks deeply to our team. At the core of it, our job has been to immortalise your happy moments through photographs and videos. This year we went beyond that by engaging with community and creating experiences for families to make new and unique memories together.

Here’s some of the moments we remember from this year!

Engaging with community at the Ibu and Makchic Events

We were happy to be invited to both events held by Ibu and Makchic this year, two organisations whose work we love dearly. At the events we created a mobile studio setup and took complimentary family photos. It was really nice to be able to give the event goers a little momento to bring home with them and to give some families who may not have stepped into a studio a chance for a professionally taken family photo!

Father’s Day Beach Adventure

We worked with educational program organiser Mad About Education (“MAE”) to create a unique Father’s Day experience where families spent a morning in Pantai Kelanang where we engaged in some play activities, explored mangroves and of course, took family photos! The event was such a success we got requests for similar experiences immediately. (Psst.. we’re in the midst of planning more of these, so stay tuned!)



The Flight of Imagination

And finally.. our proudest creation of the year! I’m sure you’ve heard of personalised children’s book where the text is changed to reflect the child’s name. Together with the team at Makchic, author Kimberly Lee and illustrator Munsya Rahman, we created a one of its kind personalised photo storybook experience where not only are the names personalised, so are the pictures in the book – replaced with photos of your own family. The process in taking the photos and having them be a part of a book, not to mentioned to actual unboxing and seeing your images will be an experience your family will treasure forever!

Looking back, we are so proud to have all of you along for the ride as we continue to create memories worth making. We look forward to seeing all of you again in 2024!

Oh! Don’t miss out on the promotion we’re running for The Flight of Imagination Book Experience! Click on the button below to find out more.

Take me to The Flight of Imagination

Our founder, Grace Tan, has also written a year-end reflection on our business website. Do check it out here!

The Malaysian – Austrian Family

In 2017, we photographed Chris and Sindee’s wedding and then some years later, their maternity photos. This time, I got to meet their son… all cutely dressed up in a traditional Austrian outfit! I love it! It’s a great way to remember your roots and heritage.

Every milestone in our client’s life is important to us too, and we really hope to be there for all the important moments in your life. It’s a journey that is precious to us, seeing the family grow! Perhaps, in years to come, we would be photographing little Joseph’s wedding. Now, wouldn’t that be amazing!

Continue Reading