Turning Disney Character Autographs Into Keychains
A few months ago I wrote about creative ways to collect character autographs in the Disney Parks. If you missed it and you’re interested, you can find it here. But what if you’ve already been to Disney and collected a ton of character signatures in a traditional autograph book? Are they stuck in there forever? To quote Olaf: “Nope!” There are tons of great ideas on how to convert those Disney character autographs into fun mementos from your trip. In today’s post, I’m sharing how to turn your Disney character autographs into keychains.
Why keychains? Well, partly because I found this pack of them at the craft store and felt inspired. And partly because it was the easiest of the character autograph ideas I’m still working on for later posts. Keychains also provide lots of flexibility. You can convert them into Christmas ornaments, backpack fobs, party favors, gift tags, thank-you notes, etc. They’re fun to make and a good way to revisit your Disney park memories.
Convinced yet? Let’s get to it.
Materials
Obviously you’ll need to locate your Disney autograph books from past trips. Go ahead, I’ll wait. (This took me longer than I care to admit!) You’ll also need a pack of keychains like those shown above, or something similar. Other than that, the extra materials are really up to you.
There are a lot of options for customizing these. You could use photographs of meeting the characters to complement the autographs. You could also use Disney park maps, resort guides or regular construction paper. I used all three of these ideas plus some ribbon for hanging.
Directions
The first step in turning Disney character autographs into keychains is to convert all of your signatures into individual .jpeg files. I used the scanner on my printer. If you don’t have a scanner, you can also take a picture of each of the signatures. The process may take a while, depending on how many keychains you want to make, but consider it a chance to relive the memory behind each autograph. Remember meeting Mickey on Main Street? Mary Poppins in the United Kingdom? It’s a great way to revisit your best moments from a trip long ago, or beat the post-vacation blues from the one you just finished.
You may think it’s cheating a bit to scan the autographs, but it gives you way more flexibility. Once they are scanned, you can resize them to suit any project. Plus, it lets you keep the originals in tact in case you make a mistake or feel strange about cutting up your memories, I mean autograph book. (Sorry Mickey!)
Once you have the pictures scanned, start resizing them to fit your need. I used Powerpoint for this step because I’m not so great with design software and I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life manipulating slides for presentations (Can we rework slide number 347 please?). Obviously there are several other design tools and apps you can use.
If you choose to follow me into the wonderful world of Powerpoint (See what I did there?) the easiest way is to start with a blank slide and insert a circle shape. Next scale down the size of the circle to the exact dimension of the key chain, which for me was 2.19 inches (or 5.5 centimeters for my metric friends). After you have the size you want, change the “filler” for the circle to a picture and select one of the autograph .jpeg files. Powerpoint will automatically resize the image to fit the circle. If the proportion looks off or you don’t like the effect, you can always insert the autograph image yourself and adjust the size manually.
I wanted some of the autographs to look darker then they appeared when I first scanned them, so I also used the artistic filter of “photocopy” to darken them a bit. Here’s your chance to add color or shading too.
Once you have the first circle the way you want it, it’s pretty quick to copy and paste new ones and change the autograph filler. After you’ve created all the signature circles you want, print the slide and cut them out.
Once the autographs are cut, trace them onto whatever background you want to use (photos, card stock, etc.) and cut those out too. Then take the keychains apart and assemble your choices.
If you want to use the keychain as an ornament or gift tag, consider swapping out the metal ring with ribbon. (Some of the craft stores sell Disney-embellished ribbon if you really want to embrace the theme!)
You can use Disney park maps for the backgrounds too. This one is from Port Orleans Riverside. I used a family photo from the resort on the flip side.
If you don’t have photographs or don’t want to mess with cutting them, you could also use construction paper. For this one, I trimmed Ariel’s signature down a bit to add a blue border.
Once I got started on these, it was hard to stop! There are just so many fun options. You could easily crank out a ton of these for party favors or make them as gifts for your Disney park travel buddies. The keychains could also be an easy and inexpensive craft to make with a group of kids, especially if you precut the circles.
Hopefully this gave you some fun ideas on how to turn those old Disney character autographs into fun mementos. The act of making them today made me smile. I hope it has the same effect on you. If you decide to give it a try could you please let me know in the comments below? I’d love to hear about your adventures too.
Add a little signature magic to your world!