Father Daughter Gifts Made From Your Own Photos

Most father daughter gifts are written in the same curly font. A mug that says daddy's girl, a keyring engraved with a date, a sign for the garage. They get used, but nobody remembers who gave which one, because the identical gift is sitting in thousands of other kitchens.

Fathers are also famously hard to buy for, and the reason is usually that they have already bought anything they actually wanted. What they do not have is a printed copy of the photograph they look at most, the one that has been on their lock screen for a decade.

That photograph is the gift. A cushion just happens to be the format that ends up on his chair instead of in a drawer.

If you are buying for a particular date rather than the relationship itself, there is a separate guide to Father's Day presents built around a photo, and another for the week he finally stops working.

Then and now, one on each side

A photo of the two of them when she was small on the front, and the same pose recreated as adults on the back. Restaging the old picture is half the fun, and the cushion is the proof it happened.

The wedding photo

Walking down the aisle, or the first dance together. Usually the best photographed moment the two of them will ever share, and it has normally never left the photographer's online gallery.

His face, as the joke

For the father who would roll his eyes at anything sentimental, a pillow cut around his own head is the right register. It gets handed over to laughter and then quietly kept.

The dog he pretends is not his

Plenty of fathers insisted they never wanted a dog and are now its favourite person. A cushion in the shape of the dog is a present from the daughter that is really about both of them.

A grid of her growing up

Nine pictures from nine different years. It reads as a timeline from across the room, and a nine photo layout needs the 60 cm size for every face to stay recognisable.

Most daughters assume they have no good photo of themselves with their dad. Usually there are plenty. They are just in somebody else's camera roll.

• Your mother's phone, or an aunt's. Whoever took the pictures at family events has the ones you are in, because you were never the one holding the camera.
• His own phone. If you can borrow it for five minutes, his favourites folder is a list of exactly what he would choose.
• Old printed photos. Lay them flat near a window and photograph them straight on. A print from 1995 photographed carefully holds up well at 40 cm.
• School and graduation days, which are formal enough that everybody is actually looking at the camera. A graduation picture of the two of you works as a gift in either direction.

Whichever you choose, the free preview shows the real crop at the real size before you pay, so a picture that only looks good on a small screen gets caught at that stage rather than on his sofa.

June accounts for a lot of it, but less than you would think. These are the other moments it gets ordered.

• The morning of her wedding, handed to him before the ceremony with a photo of the two of them from when she was small.
• When she leaves home. A cushion of the two of them stays in his house after her room has been cleared.
• When he becomes a grandfather and the photograph suddenly has three generations in it. Presents for new grandparents covers that version in more detail.
• His birthday, particularly the round numbers, when a grid of decades makes more sense than one picture.
• When she lives far away. Something soft posted to the other side of the world does a different job from a card, because it stays out.

None of these need a special occasion design. It is the same object every time, and the photograph does the work.

A lot of fathers go slightly stiff when handed anything openly emotional, and a long card makes that worse. Short works better.

• Name the memory. Remember this day at the lake says more than a paragraph about what he means to you.
• Keep a joke in it if that is how the two of you talk. Thought you might want this back, it has been on my phone for twenty years is perfectly sentimental.
• Let the back do the work. A second photo from now, next to one from then, says the thing neither of you would say out loud.

If you are posting it, put the note inside the wrapping rather than on the outside. He will open the parcel at the kitchen table, alone, and that is often how fathers prefer to receive something like this.

• 40 cm for one photo of the two of you. It sits well in an armchair without taking it over.
• 60 cm if the front is a grid. Below that, nine faces get too small to read from a doorway.
• 20 cm for his desk, his truck or his workbench. More keepsake than cushion.
• The back prints at no extra charge, so it is free space for a second photo, older or newer than the first.

The print is dyed into the fibres rather than sitting on the surface, so it washes without cracking. It can go straight to his address with a note, which is how most daughters who have moved away send it. The same idea from the other parent's side is in our guide for mothers and daughters.

Both put the same photograph in his house. Where it ends up is the difference.

A frame needs a wall or a shelf, and a lot of dads never get round to hanging anything. It goes on a sideboard, gets moved for the cleaning, and drifts towards a drawer. It also needs somebody to decide it matches the room.

A cushion goes straight onto his chair and gets used every evening. It is handled rather than looked at, which is why the photo ends up feeling more present than a frame on the wall ever does. It also survives grandchildren, dogs and being thrown at somebody during the football.

A frame is the better choice for an office or a desk at work. For his house, the cushion is the one that stays out.

This page is about the two of you. These guides are organised by occasion or by person.

• Father's Day ideas that start with a photograph, for the date most people order around
• birthday presents printed from photos, for the round number years
• Wedding gifts, if the wedding is where the best picture came from
• one present from the whole family, when your siblings want in