DIY Mother's Day Gift- Photo Collage

Crap, tomorrow is Mother's Day! What do I do? What do I get that woman? Candles? Lotion? A ferret? Well, my mom always wants something personalized and nice, so I made her this:

I kept my budget to less than $20, and this looks really nice too. I'm sure my mom will love it. 

Here's what you need: a frame, 2 paper of contrasting colors/patterns, photos, glue, decorations.

This was my frame, it cost $4.50 and was gold. 

What you do is choose all the photos you'd like to use and lay them out as you want them on your main paper. The striped paper will be my background with the red tissue paper accenting the photos.

So when you lay out the photos and the tissue paper, you snip the tissue paper into a box around the photo. That way, the photos are brought out by the red.

Here's another layout with the music paper being the main paper and the stripey paper being the accent.

For those of you who are more computer savy, you can do what I did and print out a photo collage like this:

 I chose a light, pastel theme for my photos, with some red for that pop of color.

Nothing fancy, but I wanted some photos I knew she liked that weren't too "Gothy". I bought some gold trim accents like this to embellish my photos:

 The pack was $5 and came with all these neat designs.

 Obviously, I chose my favorite one. :3

I laid out the trimming on the side of my photo and cut it to size. 

 I did the same for the other side too, so now my photos would be brought out by guilded butterflies. Now to keep those suckers from flying away- Krazy Glue.

 I put just a wee-bit on the very ends...

 Then pressed them down on my photo collage. Those butterflies ain't going nowhere.

Wait for your glue to dry, then open up your frame.

 Slide that sucker in...

 And voila!

It's very beautiful, but plain. I always like to decorate my stuff. Here is where your own crafty mind comes into play.

 You can use feather, old earrings, paint, glitter, ribbons, seashells, keys, crystals, whatever your heart desires. I wanted to use faux flowers.

 I dissected my rose and decided to use the head.

 By applying a lot of glue...

 I made sure that sucker would stay on forever.

 After dissecting some more flowers and adding crystals and glitter, my frame was done. I wanted this flower to bloom open and upward, thank God for krazy glue.

 I added some rose petals and put crystals on top.

 And I glued some glitter around the edges of the frame too.

And this is my finished product, personally personalized by yours truly.

I know my mom will love it, and I'm sure your loved ones will too. Happy hauntings! <3!