Disclaimer: if you are not slightly computer savvy this project may be too technical for you.

But hey, I have never taken a real computer class, and now I blog so there is hope for us all.

Anyway, I was recently inspired by the photo collage above by Minted. But at $35 for a printed copy, I was not interested.

Then I got to thinking about the free super user friendly photo editing site I use called PicMonkey.

So I picked the free collage option on PicMonkey and started weeding through this year’s photos from trips, facebook selfies etc until I came up with 16 photos that really described our year.

I uploaded all the photos to the collage.

And then I simply saved the collage to my desktop.

And then I opened a blank word doc, and clicked “insert picture.”

And voila, my collage was now centered on a 8×11 sheet of “paper.”

Then I added the year to the lower right hand corner by inserting a “text box.”

And then I simply printed my document. (You could even do this whole project in black and white for a different effect).

Then I just found a 8×10 frame in my frame stash, trimmed the paper to the correct size and tada!
Basically free art work vs $35 plus shipping.

I think that is pretty cheap chic.

Have a great weekend!