TIPsy Tuesday - Photo Collages

So often I hear people say they want to scrapbook but they don't have time, don't know where to start, etc.  One of the best ways to corral your photos is a photo collage.  A lot of photos don't need to be printed at a full 4" x 6" to tell the story. 

You can crop and arrange already printed photos on a piece of cardstock.  Or, you can create and print your own photo collage.  I do this a lot.  I'd just completed the layout above when I saw an article about photo collages in this month's BH&G Scrapbooks Etc. magazine.  Check out the Digifusion article in the August issue for more info.

Here is my method for creating a photo collage.  Typically I make them with photos all the same size but of course you could vary the sizes (more on that in the magazine article.)

1. Using the Organizer in Photoshop Elements, I select the photos I want to collage and right click on them.  Choose Go to Full Edit.
2. In the Editor, create a blank file (Ctrl + N) resolution 200.  Size the same as the paper to be printed on.  For the one above I chose 8 1/2 x 11 because that was my paper size even though my collage was smaller.
3. Go to the first photo to be cropped.  Choose the Crop tool.  Specify a resolution of 200 and then specify the width and height of the desired image.  The images above were cropped to 2 3/4" x 2 3/4."
4. Crop all the photos.  Your specifications for the crop tool will stay in place until you change them.
5. Drag each photo on the blank file.
6. Arrange as desired. Usually I leave a little space in between the photos.  Sometimes I leave it blank so the space will end up white.  Sometimes I draw in a rectangle behind the photo collage and color it black or whatever color I want to border the photos.  For the one above, I created a beige rectangle so I didn't have that stark white background.
7. Then just print the collage.  Usually, I do not save the cropped photos as separate files.

Once the collage is printed, you only need a title, journaling and a few embellishments.  It is a great way to keep the focus on the photos + get it done!

Project Notes:

When I was flipping through the BH&G Scrapbooks Etc a few days ago, I did get this great idea for embellishment.   Trace around a plain chipboard element with a pen or marker.  I also added some stamped images and a brad.

The flower is cut with Accent Essentials Cricut cartridge.  I used just a couple of the layers and backed it with some Close to Cocoa cardstock.


Ingredients:  Stamps:  Cherry Hill by October Afternoon
Ink:  Warm Red, Chesnut Roan fluid chalk ink
Marker:  Zig Chocolate
DSP:  Farm Fresh by October Afternoon
Cardstock: Certainly Celery for background, Close to Cocoa by SU!