The weekly social media sensation known as “Throwback Thursday” has inspired a local man to create a blog that is bound to cause smiles.
The blog and Instagram account “Kids with Beards” has a collection of young children with all different types of facial hair. The photos have received such a positive response, blog owner Mark D’Avella decided to make a Facebook and Twitter account for the photos as well. So far, “Kids with Beards” has 24 photos and over 100 followers.
"People are very excited to see themselves and/or their kids get bearded," said D’Avella. "Parents have thanked us, retweeted, and favorited the photos of their kids."
The idea behind "Kids with Beards" began developing at his job at Philadelphia-based Curalate when the company's designer sent out an email saying they needed updated photos for their website, according to D’Avella. He said the designer's email included a school photo that the Curalate cofounder mistakenly thought was D’Avella in middle school.
"I took the photo, added a beard, and responded that I actually had a beard in middle school," said D’Avella. "Everyone had a good laugh and I thought it would be funny to do that to other coworkers’ ‘Throwback Thursday’ photos, and so, 'Kids with Beards' was born."
D’Avella has now extended his beard-editing to the public. Viewers can submit photos of children to kidswithbeards.tumblr.com/submit or they can use the haghtag #beardmykid on Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr.
The submitted photos are then edited on Adobe’s Photoshop to depict the children having beards and posted to the social media sites. He says he takes new and old photos alike and adds a variety of beards that best match the style of the photo.
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D’Avella encourages others with Photoshop skills to edit their own photos and use the hashtag #KidswithBeards for a chance to appear on his blog. He aims to have a new photo every day.
The blog owner says his favorite photo is of famous comedian Aziz Ansari with a beard for #FamousFriday, which can be found on the "Kids with Beards" blog.
"The goal of the blog is to make people laugh and give them a smiling start to their day,” said D’Avella. “I have no objectives other than that."
