Photo Collage Christmas Letter

I've sent many traditional Christmas letters to our family and friends, but in recent years I have used a unique format for my holiday greetings. Rather than a Christmas letter, I have assembled a holiday themed "scrapbook page".

Collect photos: The first step in creating this Christmas collage was to collect pictures of the members of my family from throughout the past year. I included pictures at some special events that occurred during the year. For instance, the group shot in the center of the collage was taken at a family wedding in June, and the photo at the beach was taken during a trip to California in October. I also selected a few of the photos because they were good shots of family members or they were representative of activities in which we'd participated in the past year.

Choose theme: I then determined that I would use a winter/snowflake theme in shades of blue. I went to my local scrapbooking supply store and purchased blue paper with silver streaks for the background of the collage. I also found glittery craft form snowflake stickers in white, light blue and dark blue. The other materials I used were light blue printer paper, a small sheet of medium blue mulberry paper and tape.

Arrange and secure the photos: I trimmed my background paper to 8½ x 11 inches. I then arranged the photos on the paper several times before finding a pleasing arrangement and securing them with tape.

Write and print captions: I decided to use only one word to caption photos in the collage, and I didn't want an obvious word such as "tennis" for my daughter's tennis picture, for instance. I decided, instead on the word "forehand". A photo of my three sons together was entitled "brothers", the picture of my husband with the large salmon he caught was captioned "hooked", and the central photo of our family was entitled "merry" both to signify our the mood in the photo and to convey our holiday wishes.

I typed the single words on the computer and printed them on light blue paper. I tore (rather than cut) around each word. I also tore corresponding pieces of mulberry paper slightly larger and similar in shape to frame the words.

Complete the design: I then applied snowflake stickers randomly to the collage.

Color photocopy the collage: I copied the collage on a high-quality color photocopy machine. Watch for specials, and you may be able to make copies for 39 cents or less.

After folding into thirds, I put the collages into standard envelopes which I had embellished with rubber stamps and ink. The folded collages could also be sealed with a holiday sticker and mailed without envelopes.

This is not the first time I've used a photo collage/scrapbook-style format, but I think this is one of the most interesting Christmas greetings I've created. During visits to friends' and families' homes, I've noticed that it remains posted on the fridge long after the holiday season has passed.