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go beyond snapshots with a vacation collage

Most of us bring home keepsakes from our vacations and travels, but rarely get a chance to share them with others when we recall our adventures. Whether it’s a brochure from a famous castle, a shell from a beach or a rock from the forest, these “other” souvenirs are just as important as the trinkets we buy or the photos we take.

By creating a collage that incorporates three-dimensional and flat items, you’re able to engage the senses of touch and smell into your memories. You may even consider your artwork a way of recycling and breathing new life into what might have been discarded.

Plan ahead
As you travel, collect items that catch your eye. Take along resealable plastic bags and, depending on how much room you have in your suitcase, gather items like matchbooks, sugar packets, postcards, maps, ticket stubs – even napkins and straws. When traveling in foreign countries, look for unusually illustrated candy and snack wrappers too. Be careful not to break any laws, however, when you take natural items like shells, rocks, sand, driftwood, coral and feathers from parks.

Home work
When you get home, be sure to have the following materials on hand to create your collage:

• Illustration or mat board
• If you plan to frame your collage, consider cutting the mat to the standard 11"x14" or 16"x20" sizes
• Pencil and eraser
• Scissors
• Matte medium or white glue
• Brush and small pan or container

Get creative
Spread out your collage items on your work space. Many people like to group similar items, others simply lay it all out in a random pattern and pick through as they build their collage. There are no right or wrong ways to be creative: Arrange your materials in a way that looks good to you. You may consider:

• Using a map as the background and placing objects on top
• Creating theme collages such as “A day at the beach” or “Castle tours” or “Our favorite meals”
• Using newspaper and magazine images to supplement your own photos and souvenirs or for headlines and callouts
• Drawing shapes on the mat board with a pencil and placing items in the shapes. Don’t simply consider circles, triangles and squares; draw the outline of a landmark you visited or the mountain range you traveled through
• Building a completely random collage that’s simply representational, colorful, tactile and uniquely you.

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