Make a Collage of Mini Photos - Week #14

Anytime that I play tourist, I have a tendency to take literally hundreds of pictures in a single day. So being able to fit a lot of them on a single layout helps a lot towards getting them scrapped. That's why, for this layout, I chose to do a collage of mini photos.

The background layout of this design is from Design 6 of Jennifer Priest's Scrap Free Scrapbooking ebook. This design creates a huge open block that holds my collage perfectly, and a title strip down the right side.

The photos for my collage are all horizontal 3x4 photos. These are easy to print at home from my Adobe Lightroom software but several online photo printers will also print this size as well. Printing them from home, I just print them on a 4x6 sheet of photo paper and then they can be trimmed down with a trimmer, like my Westcott Titanium. 

At the bottom of my photo collage, I added in a few ephemera pieces. One of them is this hand with a finger pointing. The piece is large enough to use a tape runner on the main area of, but if I did that, the tiny point of the finger would not have adhesive and would be at risk of sticking up and getting damaged. By putting it through my Xyron Create-A-Sticker 150, it has adhesive over the entire back and sticks down securely. 

Stamping is a great way to add a custom touch to a pre-made embellishment. In this case, I used Colorbox's Archival Chalk ink to add a travel themed stamp to a piece of non-themed ephemera. I especially love chalk ink for applications like this because the matte finish looks more like it is part of the original printed piece. It also has a more vintage appearance that works well for this layout's style.

The original pattern called for cutting a 2" strip of paper from the edge of a piece of patterned paper, leaving the tear strip attached so you end up with a strip about 2.5" wide. I wanted to use cardstock for this strip, which doesn't have a tear strip, so I cut it at 2.5" and then used washi tape to mimic the look of a tear strip. 

You may have heard that you can't use gray and brown together. It's true that they are difficult to match, but not impossible. You just have to make sure that they both have the same undertones. 

The collage under the title holds more stamping that I used to customized the journaling tickets. The top ticket (the one with the date) is also a stamp. For the ticket, I used a charcoal Chalk Ink to get a softer, more matte effect than using black. On the journaling tickets, I used Colorbox Archival Black because it matched the look of the numbers on the tickets. 

There's an interesting piece of trivia related to this layout, too: the journaling pen that I used is also a souvenir from my trip! It's part of a Faber-Castell set of pens that I purchased in Frankfurt airport on the day after my Heidelberg excursion. 

While these photos may seem like a random assortment, they were very carefully chosen to cover the breadth of my Heidelberg experience. Shots represent the castle, a church, the shopping street I browsed on, the university's presence in the town, and the juxtaposition of old and new present everywhere. The photo overlooking the city is a great scenic overview, and the selfie it includes of me shows how cold it was too! There's a lot packed into these six photos! 

Supplies:

• Tim Holtz idea-ology "Dapper" collection
• Bazzill cardstock
• Recollections by Michaels washi tape
• American Crafts "Remarks" alphabet stickers
• Tim Holtz idea-ology Journaling Tickets
• Kelly Purkey "Ready, Jet, Set" stamps
• Colorbox Pigment Archival Ink in black
• Tim Holtz idea-ology Flash Cards
• Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen (Dark Sepia - S)
• Crate Paper "Notes & Things" ephemera pack
• Colorbox Archival Chalk Ink in Charcoal & Chestnut Roan
• Tim Holtz for Stamper's Anonymous "Odds & Ends" stamps
• Tim Holtz idea-ology Typed Tokens
• Tim Holtz idea-ology "Expedition" ephemera pack
• Brad (unknown)

How many photos have you gotten onto a single layout?