Last month my wife and I headed in to the city to spend a day browsing art and photo galleries for inspiration. I like snapping digital pics and dabble in oil painting so like to see what others are doing in the art world. I’ve always been most interested in the methods and materials artist’s choose to display their photos or paintings.  Some painters choose to paint on thick bamboo panels, some paint on materials as unique as car hoods (yes, I’ve seen this). Typically, for years and years, photographers and painters have displayed their art in the traditional way of framing their art with a wooden frame. I love the look of those old, detailed, chunky frames that you see in museums but they are incredibly expensive if you wanted to frame an enlarged photo or painting you’ve done yourself. This has led me in a search for new and innovative ways to display my art and photos at home and hopefully a lot cheaper then the traditional framing technique that you see everywhere–yawn.

So, in my campaign to find something new, something different, I came across a website called Bumblejax.com that prints and enlarges your digital pictures for you. They have an upload button on their homepage that allows you to upload a (.jpg only) digital photo. I’ve seen this type of service before for getting cheap posters printed but Bumblejax differs greatly from these types of sites by offering 4 different materials for to choose from to have your printed and enlarged picture mounted to. Your choices are .125″ Aluminum (cool), .25″ Plexiglass (really cool), 1/2″ Gator board and 1/2″ MDF board (compressed wood product). I uploaded a digital pic from a trip my wife and I took to Italy a couple years ago. The picture was a beautiful landscape picture of the rolling hills in Tuscany. Do yourself a favor and plan a trip to Italy, you will not be disappointed!  I chose to have my picture enlarged to 24×24″ (I like the square format option) and have it mounted to plexiglass. They use a process called face mounting where they “sandwich” your print behind the plexiglass. I don’t know the science behind it, but the plexiglass photo mounting process makes the image super vibrant and it really pops out at you! I would even go as far as saying it was stunning! Also, your print ships for FREE and comes out of the box ready to hang!