Tissue Box Full of Memories

One of my passions is photography. Any chance I get to bring my passion of photos (and my favorite subject my son) in to crafting...I do it. In one of my books (Photocraft by Herter, Frankel & Lovett) I found a neat idea. Bradley has always needed a tissue box in his room because of his random & frequent bloody noses. [probably TMI right there, sorry] He is not a fan of the flower or feminine decorations of most tissue boxes...so I decided to give this a try. I used photos from his skate lessons a few summers ago.

Here are directions on how you can make it too! (I've added some of my learnings in red)

IMAGES

• Multiple loose photographs or printed digital photographs.
• My Learning: I suggest taking your loose photographs and having them scanned at a local printer store by a high resolution printer. Print on good quality (but not photo) paper. Working with loose photographs on this project makes it a little difficult with how thick the photo paper is.

 COMPUTER TOOLS

• Photocopier

PANTRY CHECKLIST

• Craft knife
• Cutting mat

 MATERIALS

•  Creative Imaginations' Narratives - Negative strip in varying sizes (from web or a craft store) I didn't use this - but it would look really cute if you did.
•  Unfinished wooden tissue box (You can get these from Michaels or Hobby Lobby fairly inexepensive)
•  Sealer

 DIRECTIONS

1. The key is to organize photos in the negative strips in a somewhat random fashion. Try different arrangements to see what compositions you like best. While you can paste the pictures directly on the box, it is probably easier to color photo copy (in a high resolution) the combination of photos you wish to have on each size. I didn't use the negative strips...but the negative strips would look good with older photos.
2. Cover box with photos - cut up strips or stick on entire sheets of images. Arrange some pictures horizontally and some vertally. Trip away any pieces that overhang the endges of the box or wrap them around to an adjacent side
3. Once the box is completely covered, apply a sealer to all surfaces to protect it.