Everybody enjoys connecting with the child inside them and work on fun art projects! What’s better than combining that with our love to music and creating a magnificent piece of art that will inspire you whenever you walk in your beautiful music room or any other place you’ll choose to hang it? You can even make another one later, perhaps smaller and turn it into the best musical gift ever.
In 2012, while browsing through my cousin’s CD collection, I suddenly came up with the idea of “why not making a collage” out of all the cover arts of the albums and artists that I like the most?! A few weeks later it turned real and ended up as my favorite art piece in the world! Everybody who walks in my apartment is blown away with it immediately, start picking out our common-liked artists and asks questions about how to do it.
If you like the idea as well and want to give it a shot, here are the steps for creating your DIY music collage:
Fun Art Project – Cover Art Collage In 7 Steps:
1 – Create A List Of Albums And Artists That You Like
I recommend picking up the specific albums that are also visually appealing and colorful.
2 – Use Google Images To Get The Cover Arts On An Office File
Look up the chosen cover arts and make sure they are at least 500*500 pixels in size so they will look nice n’ sharp when you print them out. If you want a specific cover art to be bigger or smaller on your piece, you can freely adjust that in Office Word or any similar tool you’ll work with.
I ended up with 43 pages, most of them had two pictures in, in order to fill out a 104*74 cm/ 41*29 inch blank cardboard poster. (About the size of four A3 pages combined) If you want the collage to be smaller or bigger so adjust it accordingly.
Optional: Add Artists’ “figure Pictures”.
As you can see in the above snapshot, one of the pictures is not a cover art – it is a photo of Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits playing the guitar. I just precisely cut his figure out of the photo and layered it on top of other cover arts in the final collage to add more depth.
3 – Print Out The Cover Arts File On GLOSS Paper
Make sure you use quality gloss paper so the cover arts you print out will look like actual CD cover arts. This will make your collage looking gorgeous. Obviously, make sure you are not printing two-sided because you will have to cut the albums out individually. Now you will have in your hands about 30-40 sheets of paper.
4 – Cut Out The Printed Cover Arts From The Sheets
Be precise and use quality scissors. This can take a couple of sittings so enjoy the process and catch on some good tunes while doing it.
5 – Get A Blank Cardboard Poster Ready
This one should be done beforehand, but now’s the time to use it when you have the printed cover arts ready. You can buy a blank cardboard poster in various sizes almost in any artoffice equipment store. Choose your desired size.
6 – Action Time! Gently Glue The Cover Arts To The Poster
The fun times begin! Be creative, go freestyle and place any album exactly where you want it, you can layer them a bit on top of each other as well. Use small amounts of a quality paper glue, you do not want to make the pictures soggy. Play around with sketches before you put actual glue.
Take into account that the outermost 1-2 inches of every side of the poster will be covered by the frame if you intend on framing it so you can leave them blank. (I didn’t do it and ended up getting some bits left out)
7 – Frame It!
I recommend going for a nice wooden frame and a glass cover. Any picture frame shop can do it for about 50$ and it will make your piece last for years and years.
That’s it, now I will leave you to start imagining how gorgeous one of these will look in your room, with all your favorite albums in it.
Have fun and enjoy, and of course if you choose to create one, you are welcome leave a comment with a link to the pic so we can see the result as well!
- Please note that commercial use like the selling of a similar collage is forbidden because of copyrights on all the cover arts.
