Graduations, weddings, birthdays, mother’s/father’s days, presents for teachers — spring seems to be the same thing as ka-ching at our house.

Here’s this month’s excellent tip to meet your social gifting obligations and still have a few bucks left over for summer:

The Art Photo

What’s their thing? Monopoly™? Karaoke? Ford Rangers? Power Rangers? Did they meet cute at a local bar, or does he dearly love a certain pinball machine? Will she only listen to public radio, or whale songs, or white noise, or Suzy Quattro?

Whatever they love, shoot it. Borrow the highest pixel camera you can find and take a close-up artsy picture of your giftee’s special thing. Try to get really a really close shot of a small identifiable part of their love object — the best graffiti in the bar bathroom, a torn band poster on a wall, the heel of a Louboutin shoe — and then blow that puppy up, crop it, matte it, maybe develop it in black and white and then hand-color it if you’re feeling really Craftacularly creative, then frame it and throw it in a gift bag. Or if you’re totally broke, don’t even frame it, instead sign the white backboard like it’s a limited run printing or something. Dang!

The possibilities are endless for this — it’s especially great for weddings, because they’re so susceptible to exactly this kind of mush. The cocktail napkin she wrote her number on (or just frame the actual napkin), her toothbrush on his bathroom sink (don’t frame the toothbrush, not even in a shadowbox. No shadowboxes or scrapbooks — we’re all about Art with a big A at Ruby Mac), the site of their first date (a photo of the booth they sat in, the waitress, the Reuben, whatever). She will love you forever and he may even get teary over it. It’s way better than a blender and it’s WAY CHEAP.

Let Ruby know how it goes.

Advice for the Rest of Us appears every Friday like woodticks in springtime.

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