photo kaleidoscopes

here is a picture of raven sitting in front of our flowers out front of the house. we were taking pictures, so i just snapped one of her. i've been thinking to make her a kaleidoscope from a special picture, but just hadn't come across the right picture yet. when i saw this one, i knew it was "the one"!

so, i "reversed" the picture to make mirror images. then with a protractor, i figured out what angle i wanted to use to make the pictures connect where i wanted the connecting points. this turned out to be 30 degree angles, meaning that i would need a total of 12 pictures at that angle to make up the 360 degrees in a circle. of the 12 pictures, 6 must face left and 6 must face right.

i always order a couple extras of each pose in this situation, too, just in case i goof up on one. i know i can always order an extra if i need it, but the colors won't always be the same if it's printed off at a later date -- so i always just order 1 or 2 extra of each pose needed. if i don't need it for this project, i can always use it on a regular scrapbook page later OR cut it up and use it to make a mosaic picture or a border around the edge of the page of the kaleidoscope.

after measuring the angles and marking the pattern picture, i began matching that pattern up on all the other pictures. it's quite time consuming and a person must work very precisely so the angles match up exactly when finished.

here is the resulting kaleidoscope, made up of 12 - 4 x 6 pictures cut at 30 degree angles. after cutting all the pieces, i matched the pictures to a piece of 12 x 12 cardstock, measured it and marked a 4 inch X across the middle to give me good guidelines to work from. then i just started matching them up and sticking them down.

here is a picture of my son, scott, 4 years ago when he got his new car. i used this picture of him to make a pinwheel rather than a kaleidoscope b/c i didn't feel this picture would have good "touch points". it turned out to be a good thing, though, as he likes to have something different than his sister.
by taking this picture and having 8 prints made, i measured the pattern and cut the pictures all the same. then i just started laying the out and sticking them down, resulting in a perfect pinwheel pattern when i was done.
this is a kaleidoscope made from a picture of summer sitting in a wooden/rope swing. i used 30 degree angles on these pictures, requiring a total of 12 pictures w/ 6 facing left and 6 facing right. on these, i left the back part of the picture in the shape of the protractor and trimmed off a little of the picture at the 30 degree angle end.
these are all on 12 x 12 cardstock and are included within the specific person's scrapbook. they would make great framed pictures for display on the walls, but i wanted them in the scrapbooks.

now i just have 1 child and 4 grandchildren to go before i'll have one of these done for everyone in my family.