About Photo Collages

Photo collages are a fun way to display and use your cherished photo memories. By arranging a group of digital or printed photos together, a story is created with images. Embellishments such as invitations, programs or even receipts can be added to a photo collage to help tell the complete story. Photo collages can be made to accent a scrapbook, or framed and given as gifts.

Features

Photo collages are a grouping of related photos, positioned together to create a cohesive piece of artwork. The photos may share a similar theme, such as a birthday party, vacation or holiday celebration. Or, the common link among the photos may be that they are all in black and white, all of scenery, or all of the same person, shown over a period of years.

Types

Photo collages can be created manually or digitally.
To make a manual photo collage , gather all the items you want to use. Have printed photos ready as well as any embellishments such as invitations, ribbon, stickers or colorful markers to write on the background paper. Use a scissors and acid free glue to cut, crop and arrange the photos on the paper.
To make a digital photo collage, use a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. Open a new document, and size it to the final desired size for your project. Open all photos to be included in the collage, and crop and resize them, so they will all fit on the page. Arrange the photos by using the move tool, and dragging and dropping.

Uses

A collage created either manually or digitally on paper the size of a traditional frame makes a wonderful gift. Consider making a collage on an 11 by 14 digital file or piece of acid free paper, and framing it. This works well for a baby's first birthday. Consider making a photo collage with the baby's birth announcement and photos of them at birth, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and almost one year.

Time Frame

Photo collages can be created in an afternoon if all photos are available, and ready to be used. However photo collages of a child's school year or high school athletic career may take years to create.

Supplies

Useful supplies to have on hand when making a photo collage manually include acid free background papers in a variety of colors or patterns, scissors with patterned blades for cutting creative borders on photos, acid free glue and acid free colorful markers.