Scrapbook Ideas: Creating a Photo Mosaic

You have no some new scrapbook ideas?  Sometimes after you have been scrapbooking a while, you might become frustrated with doing the same old things over and over. I know that this is the case with my scrapbook buddies and I! In an effort to keep our scrapbooking fun and different, we brainstormed ideas for creating new scrapbook pages and came up with one idea, which is just a variation of a project many people have done before. This scrapbook idea is called Photo Mosaics. Have you ever create a mosaic before? Well, a mosaic is traditionally created with colored glass or tile and it is usually laid in a decorative way in cement or plaster. This beautiful method is the perfect change in pace we were looking for and the more we thought about it, we realized that it could definitely be done with photos.

Creating a photo mosaic is even easier than creating a tile or glass mosaic and when you are done, you will end up with a scrapbook page that looks absolutely fantastic! Here are some basic tips to creating your own:

1) The first important step is to your mosaic is to determine which photos you will use. Depending on the actual size of your photos, you will probably want to chose about 4-8 photos, which will work well for a 12"x12" or 8.5"x11" size page.

2) After you have determined which photos you will want to use, you may wish to crop them. I prefer to leave them uncropped which allows me to discard certain squares as you will see in step # 5.

3) With your photos in hand, you are now ready to cut them into equal sized squares. The easiest way to cut your photos will with a craft knife, a ruler, and a cutting mat that had a grid on it. Cut each photo in strips from the top to the bottom. Then take each strip and cut off squares. The most important things to remember is you want your squares be equal in size, for this type of mosaic.

4) After you have cut your photos into equal sized squares, you are now ready to create your scrapbooking page. Spend sometime laying out your pieces so that you will have the look you want - before you glue. To create the actual mosaic, you want to be sure that a small amount of your background paper shows through on all edges. My preference is to use the entire page for my mosaic, while leaving a 1/2" border on the edges for some journaling.

5) If you didn't crop your photos (which is what I recommend), you will find that there may be parts of a photo (usually on the edges or corners) that you can do without. To continue with your mosaic theme, you can remove these squares, but fill them in with squares from one of the other photos, which will create an overlapping effect.

6) Glue your squares in place.

The steps above are for creating uniform squares, but if that is your not your style, you may want to try creating your mosaic with fun shapes. Using your stencils, trace the shape you wish to use (like a heart, circle, etc.). Cut out your shape and then cut it into random sizes pieces, just as if you were making a puzzle! After your pieces are all cut, glue them together just like the steps above. Voila! Good scrapbook ideas! A scrapbook page your friends are sure to admire!