Face intentionally blurred

Is there someone who would be a very special guest, at a Thanksgiving dinner, a birthday dinner, or maybe an engagement celebration dinner, but won’t be present at the event? Maybe a favorite uncle or a grandma or long-time friend who lives far away and can’t be there? All you have to do is a get a blow-up of their face about 9” high, glue it to a big piece of cardboard, then cut out the head, neck, and shoulders and go all the way down to where their back would meet the seat of a chair. Draw clothing, or make it easier and more realistic by just putting a long-sleeved shirt or top on it. If you don’t have a shirt or top that fits the size of the figure, you could go to a thrift store and get an inexpensive garment.

​I’ve had quite a bit of fun with this idea over the years. I recently saw this idea used at some sports events where people could not attend. It reminded me of when I used figures at dinners.

It all started when a new U.S. President was elected just before my brother’s birthday. I decided it would be amusing to have the President attend my brother’s birthday dinner. My mom chuckled off and on, all the way through dinner. I later discovered that blowing up a photo from a newspaper or magazine can be considered  to be a copyright infringement. The next time I had a photo of a famous person to enlarge, the clerk at the copy center said it couldn’t be done. It doesn’t seem to me to be ethically a copyright infringement, since you’re not planning to make money from the copy, but technically it apparently is.

If you wish to have someone make an enlargement for you, you might need permission from both the publisher and the person in the photo. I’m sure getting permission from some national syndicated paper or nationwide magazine and the famous person could prove to be a little challenging.  It might be easier to get those permissions from a local publication and politician or from a favorite respected athlete, Christian singer, or Christian leader you’d like to have “visit.” (By the way, the figure in the above photo represented the coach of a favored team.) Hard to say how long the response time would be for receiving permission to copy the photo. You’d probably need to have some lead time.  You should explain what you plan to do with the photo. Keep the permissions to show to personnel who would make the enlargement for you. If you have a relative or friend who is great at drawing likenesses of people, maybe they would be willing to draw the face for you (in color, in the right proportion of about 9” high).

If you want to use this idea for pure sentiment, you might want to have a child draw a big picture of a person very special to them that they will miss having at the occasion you’re planning.  Then mount it on cardboard and set a place at the table for it. You could send a picture of the table, with the figure “seated” at the table and its artist beside it, to the person being honored.

I once had my sister, who lives far away, “visit” for my mom’s birthday dinner. I blew up a couple of round balloons a little bit and taped them onto the cardboard to give it a female form. Then I put on a long-sleeved sweater. It looked pretty real.

My mother-in-law, who is gone now, lived a long ways away, too. She was wanting my husband to visit her at one point, but he didn’t feel it was a good time. I sent her a “kit” to put together. I cut the figure in sections to make it easier to mail. Then I included instructions to tape  an extra piece of cardboard I sent onto the back, to connect the pieces. I included a shirt and told her to put it on the figure and stuff a pillow in it to make the body 3-dimensional. I hear she placed it on a chair and got quite a big kick out of seeing it there.

Once I left one of the figures seated at our table for a few days. I had to take it away. When my husband stumbled to the kitchen in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, he almost jumped out of his skin, thinking there was someone sitting at the table.