Collage Maker – Photos, Cut Paper and Stickers

Why Collage Is Good Learning

Collage is one of the first art forms children meet at school, and one of the most generous. There is no wrong way to hold a pencil and no drawing that “doesn’t look right”: a collage is built from pieces, and the art is in choosing them and putting them together. A child decides what goes in, what is left out, what is big and what is small, what sits on top and what peeps out from underneath. Those are the same decisions a designer makes for a poster or a magazine page.

Making a collage also builds the thinking behind good writing and good projects. A child who arranges four photos of a holiday and gives each one a label is planning a short recount. A child who sorts paper leaves by colour and size is comparing and ordering. And a child who makes a topic poster with four facts is learning to pick the most important information and present it clearly, which is a skill they will use all the way through school.

Getting Started: Layouts and Frames

Open the Frames tab and choose a layout. The free board has no frames at all, so everything can go anywhere. The grids have 2, 3, 4 or 6 frames, and the shaped frames are a big heart, a star and a circle. Press Room for a title to move the frames down and leave a strip at the top for a heading.

Tap a frame on the board, then press Add photo to choose a picture. The photo fills the frame and is trimmed neatly to its shape. Drag the photo to slide it around inside the frame, so the important part shows, and use Zoom in and Zoom out under the board to get closer. You can change the layout at any time; photos stay in their frames where they can.

Cut-Paper Collage With No Photos

Many children should not be scrolling through the family camera roll, and some of the best collages have no photos at all. The Paper tab is a pile of coloured paper and a pair of safe scissors: circles, squares, triangles, leaves, wavy strips, torn-edge scraps, stars and hearts. Choose a colour first, from the swatches or from More colours, then tap a shape to cut it out. Drag it into place, turn it, make it bigger or smaller, and bring it to the front or send it to the back to build up layers.

This is how the picture-book artist Eric Carle worked. He painted sheets of tissue paper, cut and tore them into shapes, and layered them to make caterpillars, butterflies and suns. Late in his life the French painter Henri Matisse also “drew with scissors”, cutting bold leaves, stars and wavy seaweed shapes from painted paper and pinning them onto big walls. Look at some of their books and pictures together at the library, then try the same ideas here: a sun made of overlapping circles, a fish made of a leaf and a triangle, a sea made of wavy strips in five shades of blue.

Adding Photos, Kept on Your Device

When you press Add photo, your phone, tablet or computer opens its own picture chooser. The photo you pick is opened and drawn right here on your device. It is never uploaded, never sent to a server and never shared with anyone. To keep things simple and private, photos are not stored when the page is closed: the layout, paper shapes, stickers, tape and words come back next time, but photos need to be added again. If you want to keep a collage with photos, press Save picture before you leave.

For younger children, a grown-up may like to choose the photos together, or pick a few pictures of drawings, toys, pets or places rather than people. A collage of photos of a child’s own paintings is a lovely way to make an art portfolio.

Stickers, Washi Tape and Words

The Stickers tab has stars, rainbows, flowers, animals, food, travel and school stickers. Tap one to add it, then drag it and resize it like any other piece. Washi tape comes in stripes, spots or plain, in the colour you have chosen; a strip across the corner of a photo makes it look as if it is stuck into a scrapbook.

The Words tab adds a text box. Type in the box under the buttons to change the words, choose fun letters, big bold letters, handwriting, typewriter letters or neat letters, and add a white card behind the words so they stand out on a busy background. Words are where a collage starts to tell a story, so encourage a title and a label for every photo.

Backgrounds and Borders

The Background tab sets the paper the collage is made on: plain colours from soft cream and pink to a dark navy board, and papers with dots, a grid, stripes or brown kraft paper like a parcel. The Stitched border puts a white edge and a little stitched line around the whole collage, which looks smart when it is printed.

Ready-Made Templates

The Templates tab sets up the whole board in one tap. Every word on a template is a starting point: tap it and type your own.

All about me	Four frames with labels: This is me, My family, I love and When I grow up. A favourite first project in K2 and P1.
My holiday	One big frame and two small ones, labelled Where I went, What I saw and The best bit, ready for a holiday recount.
Mood board	Kraft paper with torn scraps, tape and label cards for colours, happy things and a dream place. No photos needed.
Book cover	A round picture, a title and “by” with a space for the author, for a book review or a story your child has written.
Topic poster	A title for the topic and four frames labelled Fact 1 to Fact 4, for science, geography and history projects.

Ideas by Level

• K2 to P1: make a cut-paper animal from circles and triangles, sort stickers into “things that fly” and “things that swim”, and finish the All about me template with one word for each frame.
• P2 to P4: make a holiday collage and write one full sentence for each photo, build a repeating border from paper shapes, or make a mood board of a season with colours that match it.
• P5 to P6: plan a topic poster with four short facts and a clear title, design a book cover that hints at the story without giving away the ending, and explain why each piece is placed where it is.

Ideas for School Projects and the Classroom

• Science table. Photograph leaves, seeds or rocks from a nature walk and make a 6-frame collage, labelling each one.
• Colour hunt. Choose one colour and make a cut-paper collage using only shades of it, from the lightest to the darkest.
• Story map. Use the 3-frame layout for the beginning, middle and end of a story, with a label card for each part.
• Gallery walk. Each child prints a collage; the class walks around and says one thing they like and one question they have.

Saving, Printing and Undo

Save picture saves the whole collage, photos and all, as one large square picture on your device. Print puts the collage on an A4 page with a space for a name and the date, ready for a scrapbook, a classroom wall or a project folder. Made a mistake? Undo goes back one step at a time, at least twenty steps. Start again asks for a second tap before it clears the board, so nothing is lost by accident.

Nothing to Install, Nothing Uploaded

The collage maker runs entirely in your browser on any phone, tablet or computer, with no account and no download. Your design is kept only in your own browser, photos never leave your device, and saved pictures go straight to your own device. There is no chat and no sharing.