How To: Make a Collage Inspired By an Outfit

Have you ever had a moment when you can’t take your eyes off a certain print, pattern or decoration that a friend is wearing, or something you had eyeballed in a shop window? Besides going to the store to buy that item, or complimenting your friend on what a nice shirt they are wearing and where they got it, you could also use it as decoration inspiration for your collage. Let’s use this image below to demonstrate:

At the moment, I can’t keep my eyes off of the print of the shirt, how do I find it? First of all, we know that it’s a black and white shirt, but what kind of print is it? My first guess is that it’s a checkered shirt, so I make a google search “black and white checkered shirt” but that print doesn’t seem to match the effect I’d like. What should I do? I do another web search trying to describe the shirt: “black and white pattern”. From here I do an image search and then click on the image that fits the description I was looking for and try to find any hints as to how to name it. Found it: this type of print is called gingham. So now I just need to do a web search “black and white gingham” and I am able to get a variety of exactly what I’m looking for.

There are denim pants, blueberries, a plant in a white pot that has black details, and some eggs. If you look at the image, you can see that the shades and colors seem to work together well together, black, white, dark blue, egg-shell brown. In the end I might not use all of these details, but just take note of them as they will give you ideas as you start to choose your imagery. From the clothing inspiration I have made this collage below: 

Here is a step-by-step break down of how this collage was made:

1. Step 1: find the background
   1. tip 1: go into the web search feature and search for: “black and white gingham”
   2. tip 2: choose more than one of your pattern images so that you can choose your favorite pattern all together in the canvas
   3. tip 3: swipe away the images that you don’t want, it will fly into the garbage can
   4. tip 4: if it has other imagery that you would like to crop out, double tap on the pattern and press effects, find the crop tool to crop out the parts you don’t want
   5. tip 5: scale and tilt your pattern however you’d like and keep it as the back layer in your collage as a background. If you like the scale and position of the original image, you can double tap on it to “set it as background”
2. Step 2: add in your favorite photo
   1. tip 1: to add a white border around your photo, double tap on it, press “Border” and choose white
   2. tip 2: tilt the photo to give it a natural look
3. Step 3: add decorations
   1. white circle tag:
      1. go to web search, type in “white cloth” and choose your favorites
      2. double tap on the final image you have chosen and press “cutout” to crop it into a circle shape
      3. add it to the bottom right side of your collage, a layer over your photo
   2. text: 
      1. type out the words “You’re” and “Mine” separately so that you can be able to scale them at different sizes
      2. choose the font “Dawning of a new day”
      3. choose a black sparkle font texture
      4. place the words into the white circle tag so that you can see them clearly
   3. plants and flowers:
      1. go to web search, type in “watercolor plant png” and “watercolor flower png”
      2. remember: you must type “png” behind your search terms to get images that look like stickers, or else you will need to cutout the image yourself
      3. choose 3 different types of plants and flowers to give your collage some variety
      4. since the main color scheme of the collage is dark, choosing warm colors for your flowers will make the collage look more pop, for this collage, I chose redish-orange flower colors 

Hope you have fun collaging this, and feel free to show us your collages that are inspired by an outfit!