Make a Christmas wreath collage

James Paterson shows how to create a design for your own Christmas cards and learn essential-yet-easy collaging skills in Photoshop CC

- James Paterson

THE MISSION

Make a collage in the shape of a Christmas wreath

Time needed 30 minutes

Skill level Intermediate

Kit needed Photoshop CC

Whether you prefer to send them through the post or online, a personalized Christmas card is a wonderful way to share both season’s greetings and cherished photos with friends and family. In this project we’ll look at how to create a Christmas wreath collage using a selection of photos. We’ll fill the shape of the wreath with our photos, then fine-tune the collage so that everything fits together. This involves fundamental layer skills, masking techniques and selections. We’ll begin with a wreath shape, which can be downloaded from pixabay.com (search for wreath_3005547). You can use this wreath shape as a base to add our own photos, then bring everything together with masks and text.

Key to this effect is Photoshop’s Frame tool. This lets us make a frame anywhere in our document, which acts as a window within which we can drag and drop our photos. It gives us the freedom to reposition the image within the frame, so we have ultimate control over each image in our collage. Whether you want to make a Christmas card collage like this or create all manner of other designs, the Frame tool can be useful. After creating our first frame, we copy and reposition it elsewhere to build up the template for our photo collage. Once done, we can complete our Christmas card by adding text and any other design elements you like.