Second Project: A Collage for My Great-Nephew

My great-nephew Tyden is such a joy to me. He is extremely photogenic and all of our family LOVES taking pictures of him. Thank goodness everyone posts these pictures to Facebook. Last year, my sister (his grandmother) made a collage of all of the pictures taken during his first year of life.

I wanted to do something like that, but with a twist. When I came across this post from Life, Family, Crafts & a Little Moore, I knew this was just what I wanted to do.

The first thing I did was order a paper-mache T from joann.com. Then, I spent a lot of time on Facebook, downloading everyone's pictures of Ty. I ended up with about 110 photos that I thought were cute and would show how he has changed since he was born 20 months ago. Using Photoshop, I made the photos all black & white so I could print them on the laser printer. I also resized the photos to approximately 2 to 2.5 " tall (or wide) depending on whether the orientation of the photo was portrait or landscape.

Let me start by saying that it was hard to turn Ty's pictures into black and white. Not technically, but it made me a bit sad. He has the most beautiful blue eyes and, of course, that gets a little lost when his pictures aren't in color. You can see what I mean here:

Oh yeah, that's me with him!

Anyway, after I printed all the pages of pictures (I put several pictures on each page), I cut them out using a metal ruler and an exacto knife. I did find that it helped to print the pages of pictures at 100% of the size I had chosen, and then again at 90% and 80% so that I would have some options for covering different sized places.

I then used Mod Podge to attach the pictures to the T. Really, it is just like a giant jigsaw puzzle trying to put together all the pictures and cover the whole letter (except for the back of course). After I was done, I let the whole thing dry for an hour and then covered it in two coats of Mod Podge (with drying time in between). Then a placed a hanger on the back.

 

I couldn't even wait until Christmas to give it to my nephew and his wife!! Let me know if you like it. Do you think color pictures would have been better?