Collages

Are you looking for a good way to display pictures and other memories? I think this is a great way. It's also great for dorm rooms because you can have several smaller items in a larger frame without taking up as much space and remember great times from home. And you can make one about anything, using almost anything. For example, the two above are memories from my senior year of high school. The top one is from where my high school marching band won a Band of America Regional competition and in it I managed to show off my medal, pictures of that amazing night, and notes the band parents left us the night before and morning of the competition. The second one is from where I marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the Macy's Great American Marching Band and it just has pictures of my friends,pictures of New York I either took or got from Google, and this magnet thing (that wouldn't stick to anything so it was pretty useless) that I wouldn't use anywhere else. However, I also have one from my junior year prom with the prom invitation and pictures, two from vacations I took, and one for each of my best friends. So you really can do anything in these collages, whether it has a theme or not.

Alrighty how to make it!

Things that I used when making mine:

1. Frame. You can get these from anywhere. Dollar store, Walmart, Goodwill, wherever. My the ones I used were actually given to me by my mom since she had no use for them. They were wooden, brown frames but I painted them black so they would fit in with my purple, black, and white room. They can be any size, however I recommend a medium-larger size frame if you want to hold more things or larger sized pictures

2. Scrapbook paper. Individual sheets can be purchased at almost any craft store for like 40 cents a page or something. Or you can get booklets of scrapbook paper at Walmart or Target. The ones I used were from a booklet of different black, white, gray, and silver damask patterns that I got from Walmart for about five dollars because it was on sale. It just depends on what you want to use. The scrapbook paper acts as a background to your pictures, and etc. Keep in mind the frame when buying scrapbook paper. If you are buying a bigger frame, you might want to buy two pieces of scrapbook paper in order to cover the area of the frame

3. Pictures. I highly recommend getting pictures from the instant prints at Walmart. It's around forty cents a picture and you can just either bring in a memory card, flash drive of pictures you have saved from your computer, etc. Also, for the smaller pictures, I just printed them out on normal computer paper from my printer haha

4. Tape. Obviously. Tape is just not as messy as glue and doesn't discolor pictures like glue happens to do.

5. Scissors

6. Stickers and other items from whatever that you want to add. I used stickers to spell out names and dates and such since writing wouldn't show up on my dark scrapbook paper and because it just seemed neater than actually writing something. I also used these little silver, sparkly sticker things I found at Target to add extra details and elegance (if that even makes sense haha) to mine.

How to Make It!

1. If you need to do anything with the frame, do that first. For example, I had to paint my frame first. So yeah, do whatever you need to do to the frame first.

2. If the back of the frame isn't actually attached to the frame, take that part out. You know, the part you normally have to remove from the frame to put the picture in there. If that part doesn't come out, don't worry, it's still do-able, just a tad harder. 

3. Take your scrapbook paper and lay it over the part of the frame you just removed, or opened. Figure out the way you want to the paper to go. Chances are you are going to have to cut the scrapbook paper somehow in order it to cover all the frame, depending on the size of the frame and it size of the scrapbook paper. In my case, the scrapbook paper was too long but not wide enough. In order to fix this I just marked the point where the scrapbook paper went over the edge of the board thing and cut my marking or where I had folded it over. With the piece of scrapbook paper I had just cut off, I just turned it and I put it over the part of the board that was not covered yet. This is easier to do with a solid scrapbook paper, but it works with patterns as well, depending on the pattern and how OCD you are about the way the patterns face. If you're using polka dots, it won't make a difference which way the paper is turned. For damask like I used, the patterns will face different ways. If this bothers you, just use two sheets of scrapbook paper instead of one. Hopefully that all made sense haha. Anyways, once your paper is arranged how you would like, put tape on the back of the paper, I like putting tape in the corners and the middle :) and tape the paper to the board. 

4. Now the fun and sometimes frustrating part. Arrange your pictures however you want them on your board. This takes a lot of trial and error to see what fits, what looks good, and what all doesn't. There are so many options that things can get frustrating. The way I normally outline mine is to use three of the 4x6 printed pictures and then put the smaller pictures in the empty spots. You might have to trim some of the pictures for them to fit, but they can also overlap too, however you want it to look. You can also cut the 4x6 pictures to fit more on the space and you can place them any direction you would like. Then I would put any embellishments, such as my sparkly silver stickers, in the corner of a picture or in any relatively large free space. Again, it's how you want to design it. Once things are arranged the way you would like, tape them down! 

5. Replace the part of the frame that you took out and there you go!