Valentine's Day Craft for Guys: The Collage of Love

Here's another easy craft that will enhance the Valentine's Day for your lady. This should remind you of those early art classes that you joined just to get to closer to the junior high girls that caught you way back when your voice was still changing.

Anyways, it's pretty simple: a large collage of love. Home made gifts that take true effort and sentiment are always appreciated, no matter how simple they seem at the end.

Here's what you need:

Large red poster board

Two or three glue sticks

Heavy matte or high-quality photo paper

Lots and lots of pictures

Scissors

What is a collage, you ask? It's basically a lot of pictures put on poster board that either tell a story or have a running theme. You can do one or the other for Valentine's Day. You could do a collage that's chronological from your first picture together to your most recent picture together. Or you could do one based on your couple pictures, plus fun places and memories.

With all the pictures, you'll have to do some manual cropping. Let's say it's one of those pics that you took of yourself and your woman. Usually the background is hazy, but you stand out real well. Just cut around the "couple" part of the picture. But if the pic is of you two somewhere memorable like Glacier Point or at the beach, then keep a lot of the background in the picture. You'll have to use your judgment, but what you don't want is a square poster board with lots of square, evenly-spaced pictures on them.

If you do the chronological style, try to use mostly couple pictures. Get all the couple pictures you can find. If they are hard copy pictures and not ones on your computer, go to Wal-Mart or some other photo reproduction place and get your own copies because you'll be cutting them up. Don't upset your significant other by cutting up originals!

Make sure that if you print digital pictures that you use heavy matte paper or heavy paper with some gloss to it. You'll be using glue sticks to place them on the poster board, so using thin or regular paper may cause the pictures to wrinkle. You want it to be fun, but you don't want your Valentine's Day craft to look cheap and thrown together.

If you do the more random style where the theme is "togetherness", get some couple pictures, but you can also just as easily get pictures or postcards of places you've been together. For instance, if you had a fun or memorable experience at South of the Border, it's perfectly fine to put a picture of the giant sombrero in the collage. Don't worry about if its pictures she'll look good in, because it's not about her; it's about you two together having good times. If you have children together, it's great to put pictures of you and her with the children at their young ages or if they're wearing cute outfits. Just ensure that the collage isn't dominated by pictures of you and the kids.

Once you've got all your pictures, make sure you have enough to cover about 4/5 of the poster board. Leave room at the top to print 3-inch sized letters spelling "I Love You, (insert name here)" or "I Love Us" or "2Gether 4Ever". You get the idea. The more pictures the merrier. You can even layer some pictures on top of pictures. The point is that you have a lot of good memories together; so many that they almost spill off the poster board. The collage will make a perfect background for Valentine's Day.