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Wilkie’s gifts are really awesome!

Barb Wilkie and Really Awesome Gifts of Grand Forks provide unique options for printing and sharing your photographs.
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Barb Wilkie of Really Awesome Gifts offers Boundary residents the opportunity to make memorable gifts using their favourite pictures.

Everyone takes pictures – but then they don’t know what to do with them. That’s where Barb Wilkie and her business, Really Awesome Gifts, come in. She can take your photographs and make really cool things with them.

While the options aren’t limitless, they are phenomenal. Three of her favourite products are coffee table books and photos on metal or canvas.

With options on sizes and medium, there are selections that can make that exceptional remembrance gift possible for special occasions such as anniversaries and retirements.

“One of the most interesting is putting pictures on aluminum,” Wilkie explained. “It really brings pictures alive. Getting away from having photos under glass is the most awesome thing we can do, because light gets reflected away from a photo under glass and it takes away from the picture.”

Wilkie was impressed when she printed a picture her brother had taken of Vancouver Island’s Genoa Bay on metal. “Even in low light this thing shines and the sky lights up. So it doesn’t matter where you hang one of these pictures it will pick up light from whatever source is available.”

She has the software, the skill and most importantly the creativity to make your cherished pictures pop.

Really Awesome Gifts offers playing cards. Wilkie has made a few decks featuring cherry blossoms and scenes of Christina Lake, using a different picture to represent each of the four suits.

She also offers greeting cards. She has some stock cards available of her own design or you can custom order your own.

“The quality is phenomenal,” Wilkie said. Wedding invitations or anything else you might need in a card can be produced.

Really Awesome offers a birthday, anniversary and holiday card service as well – you provide the photos and text and Wilkie will set it all up, including the mailing.

Other products include T-shirts, business cards, brochures and pamphlets, coffee mugs, mousepads, covers for iPads and iPhones, and calendars.

She says there is generally a 10- day turn-around time, two-weeks at the outside.

Repeat orders are less expensive because the design work is already been done.

“I do it because I really like the creativity,” she explained.

She says the photobooks are a hit with guests when left out.

“You can use them as coffee table books and they will actually get looked at, as opposed to photo albums. What’s the point of having all of these pictures if they are on a computer or in a box where nobody can see and enjoy them?

“So many people say they are going to do something with their pictures but they never do. People need to stop talking about it and do it! Because once they do they will be so glad they did. It makes such a difference.”

You will often see Wilkie and her Really Awesome Gifts at local vendors markets with her other business, selling Watkins products.

“I try to be at a market every Saturday through the summer season.” She is often at Christina Lake, occasionally at Rock Creek Market and for sure at the Grand Forks Fall Fair each year.

Prices and other information are available on her website at www.reallyawesomegifts.com or by phoning 250-584- 4840. She looks forward to working up a quote for you.