$$Frugal Friday Tip$$

Using Collage Photos by Laurie

For this Frugal Friday tip, it sometimes pays to pay attention to your junk email, specifically those that offer things for free! One such promotion I find regularly is free (or reduced price) is collage prints at places such as Walgreens.

I've found collage prints to be a fun and easy way to get a variety of picture sizes for a one-page layout with multiple photos. The following photos in this post show how you can start off with an 8x10 and finish with a multiple photo layout. The process to create the print was easy online: just upload your photos, select collage print, and shuffle the photos around until you get the proportions that you desire. Getting the print can be done in a store or shipped (for a little extra). For this layout, I wanted the photo of my DH to be my focal point so I shuffled the photos on the store's website until I liked the final result. My second picture shows all of the photos cut apart. As the photos have whitespace between them you could also leave borders around the photos. Finally, my last photo shows the completed page following a sketch that allowed for different photo sizes. I find this is a great way to get out of a rut of only 4x6 photos, which I find myself in sometimes. Trimming at a 4x6 works, but sometimes it's nice to have the photos scaled in proportion already.

As another example, here is a layout that merely uses a 5x7 collage print entirely. Of course, Walgreens (or any other drug/pharmacy store) is for convenience due to the prints being on sale or sometimes free. This tip can easily be done at home with your desired photo paper size and a photo printer. Just start off with a canvas in Photoshop of the same size as your paper and drop photos in scaled to different sizes. Thanks for letting me share my Frugal Friday tip!

If you have a project in which you have used this tip - or if you have a frugal tip you'd like to share - just email a picture and description to scrappinpsycho@live.com. Who know's you may just be featured as our next Frugal Friday Tip.