At the end of the meditation that set me on this creative challenge, the idea flashed into my mind to create a photo collage for my husband’s birthday. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d need to make a nice photo collage, but I figured I could research and find out.
When I walked into the local Michael’s on Wednesday (10/10/2018), I explained my objective to a member of their staff. She said I only needed some Mod Podge, a sponge, and recommended some board. She then directed me to everything I needed.
The next thing I needed to do was gather photos for the collage and figure out how to arrange them on the board. Since my husband was out of town for the week on a business trip, I spent Wednesday evening going through photos on my phone and computer. I gathered the image files into a Collage folder on my computer and then uploaded them to Walmart.com’s photolab site for printing. I selected more images than I would need — just to be on the safe side. By Thursday morning, my photos were ready and I picked them up that afternoon.
I’ll be honest, I was a little unsure about the project because I never have considered myself to be very “craft-y.” The actual process of creating a collage seemed simple. What made me leery was cutting and arranging the photos where they looked good. Fortunately, my daughter Jillian is a senior in Advertising/Art at the University of Georgia. So I told her what I had in mind and asked for suggestions.
Jillian suggested selecting images that go well together. I told her I planned to use photos of Dave with various members of his family — me, his kids, grandbabies. She suggested also printing some photos of places we had visited that did not have people in them. These could be used as background / filler. This was a wonderful suggestion and took the pressure off me in arranging the photos.
Thursday afternoon (10/11/2018), I cut and arranged the photos and placed them on the board. Fortunately, Jillian was available for me to text her photos of the project as I went along. While she liked my arrangement and didn’t make any suggestions, I felt more confident having an expert eye on my project. Her approval meant the world to me.
That evening, I carefully moved the arrangement off the board and used the Mod Podge as glue to place the photos back onto the board. I used 4 basic landscape photos for the backdrop. The entire board could be covered by six 4×6 photos. I didn’t use a landscape backdrop for the lower left or the upper right. I used some photos that filled up the lower left. The upper right was a photo of Dave and me lying on grass.
After placing the base layer of images, I began re-assembling the collage working from the top down. Once all the images were glued in place, I placed a thin layer of Mod Podge over the top of the entire collage. It took about 20 minutes to dry. Then I added another coat, allowed it to dry, added a 3rd coat, and let it dry overnight.
The Mod Podge goes on white, and I got a little nervous about some spots that took longer to dry. They stayed white longer before becoming translucent. Eventually, the Mod Podge all became clear. So you don’t need to worry about that if you’re making your own collage.
To keep my sponge from drying out between coatings, I put it inside a ziplock bag. This kept it moist. I didn’t want to rinse it out between uses because water residue on the sponge could have damaged the photos.
A collage like this would also be great as a Vision Board. Give it a try! It was a really fun project.
