Take a family of roller-coaster enthusiasts and a mom who loves to document family trips on film, and you have the makings of one cool collage. For years, the Reines have spent their summers riding coasters wherever they could find them -- and mom Lorna has snapped photos of the signs that announce their shriek-inspiring names. Five years ago, as a birthday present to her husband, Terry, she turned those photos into a colorful collage-in-progress.

For the past four summers, the family has continued to coaster-hop, and last season, 7-year-old Jennifer finally reached that long-anticipated 48-inch height, enabling her to join her parents on some of their thrill rides. The Reines will celebrate another milestone this year: filling in their final spot on the collage. It now hangs in the family room of their Pickerington, Ohio, home, preserving memories of wild times on Son of Beast, Top Gun, Raptor, and many other delightfully loopy amusement park rides.

As the Reines discovered, collage making can be addictive. Once the first is complete, they'll embark on their second coaster collage. And last summer, after touring Squire Boone Caverns in Indiana, they had another inspiration. "Jennifer enjoyed the trip so much," says Lorna, "that we may have to start a cave collage too."

 
Project Pointers
• A digital camera makes it a cinch to size and edit photos to fit your collage. But if you don't have one, you can crop your prints with scrapbooking scissors so the edges add interesting shape and texture.
• Lay out your collage on a piece of photo-safe poster board. Once you have an arrangement you like, use photo splits or scrapbooking tape to mount the snapshots to the poster board, then slip the collage into a frame.