Devon Rex photo collage, made from your own photos

A Devon Rex photo collage, cut to the outline of the breed and filled entirely with your own photographs. The ears are the whole thing: they are enormous in the silhouette, two tall triangles set wide on a small wedge of a head, and they are what names the breed from the far side of a room rather than any part of the body. Below them the cat sits slight and upright with daylight between the front legs and a thin tail curling along the base, so this outline asks a little more of its photographs than a solid shape like the ragdoll does. Inside goes whatever you already have: the cat on a shoulder, the cat under a blanket because it is always cold, the cat in the one patch of sun. The name and the line underneath stay editable in Canva.

See how it works in Canva: watch the how-to video.

How many photos fit

Every figure comes from the layout engine rather than a rule of thumb. The suggested count is where each photograph prints about two inches on each edge - large enough to make out a face across a room. Because this collage is cut to an outline rather than filling the sheet, that is far fewer photographs than a plain grid of the same size takes. The minimum is 15 photos; below that, parts of the outline can be left without a photo.

Questions

How many photos do I need for a Devon Rex photo collage?

The suggested figure, which the table above gives per size. It is worked out so your photographs print at roughly two inches a side. The ears are big enough to survive anything, but the legs and the tail are narrow, and the gap between the front legs closes up when the cells get large - which turns a sitting cat into a solid lump. If you are choosing between a bigger print and more photographs, more photographs wins here.

The coat is the whole point of this breed, and a silhouette has none. Is that a problem?

The edge cannot show it, so the ears are left to announce the breed, and they manage it from across a room - no other cat here has that outline above the head. The curl arrives with the pictures. It is worth choosing a few taken in raking light from a window, where the coat shows up, rather than under a ceiling bulb that flattens it.

What do I actually get?

The outline already built as a Canva template, opened with a free account. The work left is choosing which pictures go in; the fiddly part is done. Export it when you are happy and print it wherever you like - we print nothing and ship nothing. Your copy stays in your account, so a better photograph next spring can replace a worse one.

Can I change the name and the wording?

Every word on it, down to the typeface. Canva is a design tool first, so what arrives is a document still open to work on rather than a flattened picture somebody else finished. Many people end up deleting the text once the collage is in, and the shape carries the print on its own.

The ears look too big. Is the outline right?

They are drawn from the breed standard, where they really are that large in proportion to the head, and a silhouette exaggerates nothing it does not have to. Seen flat and in one colour they read as bigger than they do on a living animal, because there is no face underneath to give the eye a sense of scale. Fill them with photographs and they settle.

My cat is a rescue and I have no kitten photos. Does that matter?

Not to the result. A collage has no timeline in it - the frames do not know which year they came from, and nobody looking at the finished print can tell that it starts at three years old. What would show is a thin set, so if the years before you are missing, go wider rather than further back: the vet trips, the windowsills, the people who come round.

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