... just Laura: Kerri Bradford Studio: Framed Collage Project

Happy Monday everyone! I had such a productive weekend, and got a TON of scrapping work done. More than I even thought I would, and what's even more surprising is that most of it isn't even due for another week. Anyone that knows me, knows that I never work ahead. Lol.

In case you haven't heard yet, there is a brand new photo template kit up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today! I know how much I love working with Kerri's storyboard templates. I love a good photo collage when it comes to scrapping lots and lots of photos.

I had been kicking this idea around in my head for a few months now. Well, not this exact idea. The photos I had in mind were of Alyssa's band friends that she's collected this past school year. She did send me copies of all of her photos so that I could try my idea out, but there's a lot more photos to work with (100+), so I thought I would start smaller and go from there.

So I decided to use photos of my daycare kids. Not just the ones that are here now, but a photo of every single child that I have watched over the years. I have created a few layouts that contain a good amount of these kids in one place, but I thought it would be nice to create something that could be displayed out in the open for everyone to see. I think that would help convince any prospective parents to bring their children to me, right ;)

When I first saw Kerri's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit, I knew it would be perfect for this type of project. I chose the template that held 16 photos. I then did a quick count of how many kids I have watched over the years. This was actually fairly easy, since I'm required to keep a "roster" of sorts for the state, which I have been filling out and adding to for the last eleven years. I counted out 35 kids. Which seems like a lot, and yet at the same time, I thought would be a higher number.

Then came the hardest part. Finding a photo for each child. For some of these kids, it wasn't so much finding a photo, but picking just ONE photo. Some of these kids were with me for one year, two years, three+ years. How do you chose just one photo, and from what age to you chose it. What about the ones that came as newborns? Did I chose a baby photo, or one from when they were older?

Then there were the kids from the very beginning. I took tons of photos of them too, but that was before the digital days. I have all of my negatives organized and can easily find what I need. But that's still a lot of digging around, taking the negatives to Costo for reprints, and then they're still not an actual digital file to work with. My scanner only works when it wants to work, so I didn't want to mess with that. Some of those earlier kids I was able to find photos of when they were older, since I've taken family photos for some of them. So even though they might not be the same young faces that I took care of at the time, I'm ok with using a slightly older version of them for this project.

There are three photos on here (the first collage I showed) where I actually took a photo of a photo, from one of my layouts. It didn't work perfectly, but it will do. And sadly, I had four kids that I just couldn't find photos of. I feel bad leaving them out.

I had picked up a poster sized frame that was 12"x36", so my plan was to create three 12"x12" photo collages to fill the frame. Since I ended up with 31 photos, I decided to fill the first template completely, and fill the top two rows of the second template, and the bottom two rows of the third template. I was bummed that I had that one empty square the bottom. And about a week after I finished this project, I got a new little daycare baby. I'll have to add her in there at some point.

Just to give you an idea of what my plan was, I created a 12"x36" canvas in Photoshop and copied each of the collages over, one on top of the other. Because I only used the top part of the second template and the bottom part of the third template, once I stacked them up, that left me a 12"x12" section to fill. My plan was to just create something to lay on top of those using cardstock and patterned paper. Keep in mind, I had each template printed seperately. But if you found a spot that would print something 12"x36", you could print something just like this all on one large photo.

This is a terrible photo of the completed project, but it's honestly the best I could get. I even took out the plexiglass, thinking that would help. But I was still getting lot of glare anywhere I went in the house. Hanging it on the wall didn't help. So you'll just have to trust me that it really looks good in person.

I adhered all three of the printed photo collages to the paper that actually came in the frame, just to hold everything in place. I had my collages printed at Costco, and each were $2.99, so $10 for all three of them.

I wanted to keep the paper area of this project pretty simple, since this is going to hang in the playroom (which is really our living room/dining room, so it's right when you walk in the door). I added a sheet of white cardstock that I very lightly misted with pink spray mist. I chose the "If you're happy and you know it ... clap your hands" phrase from Kerri's Happy kit. I wanted something fairly large and I think it kind of ties in with the whole daycare/kids thing. It's a song that plays on about 38% of these toys too, so I find myself singing it quite a bit!

To finish it off, I simply dug out a really old piece of heart patterned paper, a few aqua cardstock border strips, and a piece of brown polka dot ribbon. Easy and not too busy looking. When I get new kids here, and am ready to add a few more to the frame, I can add them right into the templates, since I saved them all as working files. All of the kids are in the order of which they started coming to me, so I would most likely just shift everyone up to make room at the bottom for the new ones. I can always make that paper area smaller as well.

Next on my list is to find a spot to hang this. I had a spot in mind, and when I hung it up there, it just looked too small, oddly enough. So for now, it's propped in my scraproom. And with the school year coming to an end soon, I need to get working on one for Alyssa with all of her band photos from the year.