Creating a Collage Frame!

My husband and I did quite a bit of traveling before we had our girls. We lived in Washington DC for many years and it was cheaper to fly to Europe than it was to fly home to the west coast! It was a lot of fun. During our travels we collected not only souvenirs but old bags, tickets, receipts, flyer's from everyplace we visited. After three years, the bits and pieces of our traveling collections added up to too much clutter. Instead of throwing these memories away, I decided to display them in a collage art frame. I had always been interested in collage art! Here is what I came up with:

1. I knew that I would be making several frames so I purchased the frame (shown right) along with several other similar frames at the same time.

2. I separated the flyer's, tickets, receipts, and magazines we collected from Austria and put them together in pile. I sorted through the pile to find the items I wanted inside the frame and the items I wouldn't mind cutting up to past on the frame.

3. Once I made my decision, I started with the larger pieces and used them as background. For instance, the image of the frame to your right shows part of a Beethoven Museum flyer from Vienna (my favorite place to visit!) and the large letters spelling "Austria" and "Vienna" in red and yellow were out of a magazine.

4. After creating a background, I placed smaller items such as tickets and even a hotel a card from the first place we ever stayed that gave us a mint on our pillow at night.

5. After placing the smaller items over the background, I filled in with scraps from the larger flyer's and magazines - including the sides and inner frame work to make it a more polished look.

6. Once I completed gluing the entire frame, I simply used a decoupage liquid and brushed it over the top of the paper, let it dry, and repeated the process again.

7. When it was completed, I placed my favorite photos, stamps, tickets, and money from our trips to Austria inside the frame.

I have several more frames to go, I'll keep everyone posted on my newest creations and keepsake ideas.