Here’s a little mosaic ornament project I made a couple years back. I made two Flickr mosaic ornaments in two different themes. The first theme is of the city I used to the live in, Lexington (admittedly, I had a lot of landmark shots and this was a convenient topic to pick interesting photos from). The second theme is my friend Molly. I wanted to fill it with various images of her and people and pets that she loved.

Just a word to the wise, I used the BIG HUGE LABS mosaic maker to create these images. This site works with the web site Flickr, to create unique photo creations. If you are unfamiliar with Flickr, I suggest you check it out right now! It’s a great way to get ideas and information and you can log in and get a free account. With a basic free account, you will be able to upload photos (FYI – there’s a megabyte size limit per month for free account users, so size down your photos before uploading). Now onto how I made my creation…

Fun Mosaic Photo ornaments

Surface:
– 2.5″ x 3.5″ flat wooden ornament (available at Hobby Lobby)

Supplies:
– Computer with Internet, Photoshop, and color inkjet printer
– black paint or ink pad
– small flat brush
– Spray sealer
– Thin ribbon (I used ribbon with a stitch design)
– Glue gun and glue sticks
– Aleene’s Tacky Glue
– white cardstock

Instructions:

1. Log into BIG HUGE LABS and select the Mosaic Maker Icon
2. For my designs, I chose the square tiles layout with a 3 column width and a 4 column height. I chose for the background color to be white and for the border color to be black. I selected 1 pixel for the space between the images.
3. Either go to your flickr photos and type in each individual URL (there will be 12 in all) or select from a photoset, favorites, or tags to get a random selection of photos. Note: I chose individual URLS, so I could place photos in an exact arrangement. As you play more with the mosaic maker, you will see what I mean.
4. Once finished, click the Create button to see your mosaic design. Save the mosaic design to your computer.
6. Open the image in Photoshop. Now create a new page and make use your guidelines to create a 2.5″ x 3.5″ rectangle. Copy your mosaic image into this blank document and use the Free transform tool to fit it exactly into the guideline box you have made. Note: If you need to stretch it just a bit – it’s not a big deal – that’s what I had to to create mine.
7. Print your image on white cardstock on your color inkjet printer.
8. Cut around the image. Use tacky glue to adhere it to ornament surface.
9. Use an black ink pad to go around your image, leaving no natural wood areas. (You can skip this step if you want, but I didn’t want the ribbon to somehow not lie smooth to reveal the wood areas).
10. Once dry, go around image with glue gun and thin ribbon. Create a loop with the ribbon and glue gun it onto the back for hanging.

Hope you enjoyed this fun little ornament project!

Until next time Swellions!

Alexa P.S. Linked up at TaterTots and Jello