If you want to help your children making a teacher appreciation collage, this book can help you.

If you wish to learn how to make collages and help your children with them, this article will help you. It is aimed at people who would like to spice up their rooms with personal collages, but it can also help those wishing to do a teacher appreciation collage.

HOW TO MAKE A COLLAGE
Perking up your personal space can be a rewarding experience, if you decorate with personal collages. Collages fill in the spaces on your walls and display the moments and highlights of your life for all to see. To start a paper or photographic collage, you will need the following materials: clear glue, frames, scissors, ruler, pencil, tissue, photographs, material and any paper/flat memorabilia.

Ask Yourself:
What do I want to express? Do I strictly want to preserve photos/memorabilia? Memorabilia can be classified as: poems, essays, art, clip art, dried flowers, religious items, tickets, cards, and notes. Yarn or other fabrics may be incorporated for texture and effect.

Begin your collage with a great frame of your choice (large or small frames go according to your personal preference). A good starter frame is a large posterboard that can be found at almost any office supply store or frame shop.

It helps to lay out your memorabilia on a large table or floor. Take a thorough look at all that you have to use in this collage and what you want to use first. Weed pieces out that you feel don't add to anything. Try to have a theme in mind for your collage, and then act on it when choosing what goes in and what stays out. Teacher appreciation is of course a wonderful theme that you can use.

Creating a Theme:
Look for items that are related in some sense. An example might be a literature collage with your favorite poems, images of the past (Victorian, 40s, 50s, etc., or sports events. Let your mind run uninhibited and try to remember that there are no boundaries in collage-making. Rather, choose what is special and use the rest as "filler."

Filler is the pieces of scrap paper that fall on the floor when you're cutting out what you want; don't discard these scraps! Scraps are very useful for filling in the empty spaces on your posterboard. This could mean using the trimmings from a photograph that was just pasted onto your posterboard to fill a small hole in your background. Or, you might take a scrap from a magazine clipping and use it fill in somewhere else - whatever catches your eye. Remember: you are the artist and creator and it is your personal masterpiece.

Marking Shapes, Forms and Patterns:
Use your own expertise and judgment to create shapes and fancy edges. Do you love flowers? Simply cut out your memorabilia in the shape of a flower (whole piece) or use small pieces to create a flower-like pattern. Do you like creative edges as opposed to a straight scissor cut? Use pinking sheers or construction paper scissors (in the kid's/school section). They're great for collages, since the edges of your materials, especially photos, usually need to be "blended" into oneanother and they usually fit better side by side this way.

A collage may be completed over three weeks or a few days. It depends on how much you want to put into it. Remember to keep things that inspire you in a separate cabinet or drawer. You just might be able to utilize them for your next memorable collage. If you’re just helping your kids out with their teacher appreciation work, a simple collage will be a funny activity for you to do with them, and the teacher will love it.

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