Welcome back to Watch Me AI
If you’re new here, great to have you.
Watch Me AI is where I share practical ways to use AI in your work and life. Here are a couple of past issues to get you started: It's time to switch to Claude and "How can I make more money?"
Claude Design launched (last week's newsletter), we got a new version of ChatGPT Images, and I bought a fancy printer. So I have been all-in on AI creative projects recently.
Sharing a few recent projects in hopes they inspire you on what you can create with AI. For yourself, your family, as gifts, or just to push your creative confidence.
The watercolor house portrait
The first project was a gift for a friend’s birthday.
I found a photo of her house on Redfin and used Gemini to turn it into a watercolor painting.
It was surprisingly fast. I think I made a couple of tweaks, but not many. It came out really beautifully, and personal and giftable in a way that felt much more special than buying something random.
I printed it on nice paper, framed it, and gave it to her.
My prompt for this (in Gemini Pro Nano Banana) was something like: "do a watercolor version of this house" (with image attached).
Our house, but make it an architectural sketch
After the watercolor gift worked so well, I started trying a version for our house.
For ours, I'm trying for more of an architectural sketch style, something more classic and line-drawn.
This has been harder. I have not nailed it yet, What I love about doing this at home is that the stakes are low. I can experiment. I can print a test. I can decide it’s not right. I can try again later.
It doesn’t have to be precious.
The neighborhood postcard pack
The next project was a little postcard pack of neighborhood landmarks.
At first I thought I could convert existing photos into watercolors, same as my friend's house. However I didn't have any good photos of the landmarks I wanted. So instead, I asked Gemini to create watercolor paintings of those landmarks based on a few bad Google search images. It did brilliantly.
Now I have four pieces that feel like a cute little neighborhood postcard pack. I printed one of each and framed them for a gallery wall in our house.
I’m also thinking about printing sets and giving them as gifts to friends in the neighborhood.
My daughter’s name art
The project I’m working on now is art for my daughter’s room.
You know those illustrated name signs people make for kids? Or when you’re on vacation and there’s someone on the boardwalk who will paint the letters of your name in a cool style?
That’s the idea.
I already had four matching frames in her room with art in them. I’ve been ready to swap that art out, so now I’m making one illustrated letter for each letter of her name.
I’ve been experimenting with different styles, and the one I’m currently into is over-the-top floral sculptures. I found inspiration images on Pinterest (mainly of wedding floral designs) and shared those with Gemini with a prompt about turning them into "the letter A".
What I love is that this can evolve.
If I decide in six months that I want a different style, I don’t have to buy all new art. I can just make another version with ChatGPT, print it on 8.5 x 11 paper, and swap it into the frames.
That is such a small thing, but it makes decorating feel more flexible.
You can try something. Live with it. Change it later.
For this project, I used the new image gen in ChatGPT and it was awesome.
Why this feels different
I’ve written before about using AI for images, holiday cards, coloring sheets, storybooks, and visual assets. But this feels like its own category.
The difference is the physicality. These are not just digital outputs. They become gifts, wall art, keepsakes, postcards, framed prints.
And the combination of AI plus a good printer is weirdly powerful.
AI gives you the image.
The printer makes it real.
The frame makes it feel intentional.
Suddenly, you are not just generating pictures. You are making objects for your life.
A few ideas to try
If you want to play with this, here are a few easy places to start:
- Turn a friend’s house into a watercolor portrait
- Make a postcard set of your neighborhood
- Create illustrated letters for a kid’s room
- Turn a favorite vacation photo into a vintage travel poster
- Make a set of recipe cards in the style of an old family cookbook
- Create custom wrapping paper or gift tags
- Make a tiny gallery wall around one theme: your city, your pet, your favorite restaurants, your garden, your house
You do not need to become a professional artist. You just need to make one thing you like enough to put on a wall.
A note on printing
I have not owned a home-printer in a very, very long time.
Creating these AI images and seeing the possibilities for art, gifting, and product building got me to finally purchase a printer for our house. I went fancy since I wanted something that could print quality art prints and gifts (Epson 8550), and I have zero regrets. It's an incredible printer and you save money on ink. Paper, however, has been a significant additional expense since you gotta get the good stuff.
I could go on about my love of the printer, but you do not need a fancy printer to do these projects. You can get them printed at a local print shop or send them to Shutterfly or similar. Or even print on a low quality home/office printer just to get a feel for things before investing.
Note: the paper type makes a HUGE difference. So don't get discouraged if your art looks bad on regular paper. Happy to share more about my printer/paper learnings with those interested.
Have you made any AI arts & crafts? If so, I want to see them! Hit reply and send me a picture.
Until next time,
Mollie
