Some of you might remember that a while ago I showed you the collage I’d made to hang over my piano (if you can’t remember- fear not! The post is right here). Well, I really like the pictures of Emma, but when Boyfriend found that genius program called The Rasterbator I decided it was time for a change. Put simply, the Rasterbator takes a digital image of your choice and turns it into millions of tiny dots (when looking at it from a distance, the eye can’t see the dots and it simply looks like a regular image). The Rasterbator then creates a pdf-file where the image is spread over as many regular sheets of paper as you wish (thus creating an image that is as big as you’d like).

As you can see, my image is quite big, though I think it would have looked better if it was even larger. I love the symbolism in having the picture of Lucy peeking into the wardrobe hanging right above my piano – sometimes I feel just like Lucy going to Narnia when I’m making a new song.

To create your own gigantic picture, simply do this:

♥ Download The Rasterbator. Yes, you can simply rasterbate images online, but the downloaded version allows you to choose smaller dots, thus creating a better final result.

TIP: If you are using Windows, the program should run just fine. If you’re on a Mac, however, you’ll need to follow these guidelines to make the program work. It might be handy to have a Mac-nerd at hand, since the instructions require that you have some knowledge of working with the Terminal and other nerdy things.

♥ Find a photo you want on your wall. This is actually what I found most difficult, and I had a hard time deciding between Lucy or an image from the kiss-in-the-rain-scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

TIP: It might be helpful to know that if you have a very small room and want it to appear larger, choose an image with some depth in it. The Lucy picture made my tiny room seem so much bigger, and it took me a while to figure out why…

♥ When you choose your image, keep in mind that the bigger the picture, the better the quality of the final result.

TIP: You can do this to enlarge an image that is a little small. Boyfriend did this to my Lucy-image (it was originally 1400×1034 pixels big), but unless you’re a real nerd, you should probably find one to help you before attempting this as the procedure is quite complicated. For the less nerdy of you out there, simply choose the biggest image you can find of your chosen motif.

♥ Run your chosen image through the Rasterbator program. This is where you choose how big you want the final picture, whether you want it in black&white or colours, and how small dots you want.

TIP: I chose dots the size of 2mm. This creates an image that looks good even from a rather short distance, but your printer won’t have to work itself to death.

TIP 2: If you choose it print it in colours, it will use A LOT of ink. If you want it in black&white like mine, the best way to do this is to use an image editior (I use Pixelmator) to make the picture black&white, then choose “multi-color” in the Rasterbator. This will create a black&white picture with lots of detail and shadings, compared to simply choosing black&white in the Rasterbator.

♥ Print the pdf-file that the program created. I strongly recommend printing it on paper originally intended for drawing or painting, as regular printing paper is very thin and will become bumpy because of all the ink.

♥ Before you do anything else, number the sheets with a pencil on the back. This will save you lots of time puzzling it together if the order becomes messed up somehow.

♥ Cut off all the margins on each sheet. The best way is to use a ruler and a utility knife, as the edges have to be as straight as possible to create a good final result.

♥ Attach the topmost row (a strip of the sheets going from left to right) of sheets to each other (check to see that the pages are lined up correctly first) by taping them together from the back. Use a little tape first, check that the result is good, then use more tape to secure it.

♥ When you’ve taped all the rows separately, use tape to attach the rows to each other. Again, use a little tape first, work with it until it looks good, then use lots of tape to secure it.

Voilá – you’re done! If anyone managed to get through this insanely long and nerdy post and decide to create an image of their own, please leave me a comment so I can see how it turned out. And a more fashionable post is on its way, if anyone got concerned with my level of nerdiness…