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Fold-Out Photo Gallery | Christmas Display Ideas

Fold-Out Photo Gallery

Total Time Needed: 1-2 Hours

Good things come in small packages.

Materials

  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • 8 1/2- by 11-inch paper
  • Cardboard
  • Hole punch
  • Rubber stamp
  • Ribbon

Instructions

1. With photo-manipulation software - or old-fashioned scissors and glue - arrange photos of your family to fit on one side of a horizontal 8 1/2- by 11-inch sheet of paper. Add a greeting, something like "Best wishes from our family to yours."

2. Make color photocopies. (Many home printers leave a blank 1/4-inch-or-so feeder edge down one side of the page; you can trim it off after you've made your copies for an even border.)

Fold-Out Photo Gallery - Step 3

3. With your pictures facing you, fold each piece of paper like an accordion fan, moving from left to right. Make 5 folds total (giving you 6 sections); the first fold should turn over, not under (see diagram).

4. So that our sections would be even without measuring them, we divided the width of our paper by 6 (in our case, 1 3/4 inches, since we'd trimmed down the paper from its original size) and cut a piece of cardboard that same width. We then used the cardboard as a guide for the first fold on each new card (and that first fold for each subsequent one on the same piece of paper).

5. With your photos still folded like a fan, hold the paper vertically with the left-most flap facing you. Now fold that into thirds: first, fold the bottom third up over the middle section, then turn the whole thing over and fold it up again. For nice, crisp creases, press all the folds with a plastic spoon.

Fold-Out Photo Gallery - Step 6

6. To make the front and back cover tags, decorate card stock or construction paper. We went with simple rubber-stamped gold stars -- a great project for even the youngest kids. Once dry, cut them into 2 1/4- by 3 1/2-inch rectangles; snip off 2 corners of each for a pretty hexagonal shape. Punch a hole through the tops of half of them (they'll go on the front).

7. Unfold the fan and lay the photo gallery flat with the pictures facing you. Glue the front tag (with the hole) onto the back of the upper left corner of the paper, as shown below. Then fold up the card, align the back tag (without a hole) with the front one, and glue it on as well. Now tie on a pretty ribbon.

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