Mod Podge Photo Collage Tray

November 8, 2011 , Jess , 3 Comments

While in this theme of all things retro I cannot help but associate crafts that relate to my family. I love that vintage items are often things my parents or grandparents grew up with. It’s a way to connect with family members from a part of their life when I was not around.

One of the cool things about my mother is that she grew up with four sisters (and four brothers for that matter) and her mother also grew up with four sisters. Having no sisters myself I find the dynamic of having four sisters and then having five daughters of your own to be very interesting. I therefore decided to raid my mother’s photo collection to find photographs of my grandmother with her sisters growing up (mostly in their 20’s) and then photos of her with my mom and her sisters. I included photos of the men in their lives (my mom’s uncles, father and brothers), but I liked the idea of keeping the focus on this unique family dynamic of women.

I scanned all of the photos and enlarged some, while shrinking others and printed them out on computer paper. I would be repeating the photos in the project and I wanted to have diverse sizes to fit in all the places I would need.

I found this wood tray at a thrift store and thought it would be perfect for mod podging.

I first laid out everything on the center to get a general idea of where I wanted to place the photos. I then sprayed the tray with adhesive spray. Try to get as much of the tray as possible as you can only spray it once (if you missed a corner you need to use mod podge as you do not want any adhesive spray to get on the surface of any photo). The photos are some what forgiving if you misplace the photo when you lay it down. Once you have found the spot for a photos you need to press it down and make sure there are no bubbles in it.

If you are mod podging anything with a round surface try to as many photos as possible to hang over the edge on the first around of spray adhesive, as it is easier and looks cleaner to fold photos over the top to the bottom then fold photos over from the bottom to the top.

After you have added photos to the front, repeat on the back. I found it best to mostly use photos you used on the front, but in different sizes so as to create an interesting back, but one that was not more intriguing than the top. It also gives it a bit of a wallpaper effect by using the same photos, which I enjoyed.

Once you have done the top and bottom of the tray it is time to fill in the sides of the tray where the photos did not overlap. For this you will use only mod podge by putting it where on the tray you want to place the photo and then on top of the photo itself once you have put it down. Do not worry about making a mess or getting mod podge on other photos, the entire thing will be covered in a couple of layers of mod podge. Just go for it.