I think most of us like to do something "green" - it seems to be a bit of an "IT" thing to do these days (I blame Anya Hindmarsh's I'm Not A Plastic Bag tote, which btw is a total rip-off of the iconically antithetic statements pioneered by Rene Magritte (for those of you who don't understand French, the writing in the poster I've linked to the artist's name reads "this is not a pipe") ... but then you already knew that I'm sure :)
But what happens after we dutifully put our recycling in the appropriate receptacles? It still has to be processed, sorted - and really? I wonder how much of it actually DOES get turned into post-consumables...
SO...as an artist, I'm always looking for new ways with old things. Of course I love anything vintage (which, technically, is the purest form of recycling because that means you're using things that have already been around for ages), but I'm a firm believer in the idea that recycling starts with keeping things OUT of the recycling bin in the first place (as it were, actually RE-using something).
The easiest and most straight-forward item to recycle into artwork are merchandise tags. There's no end to how many cool things you can do with those - but I'll save that for another post. Today, I want to share something fun that I did last week but haven't gotten around to posting yet: a Recycled Art Tag. This is so easy, even your kids could do it - and what a great way to get them started on eco-friendly art! :)
For my project, I used the packaging from some metal scrapbooking tags - but you could use almost any packaging. The size is really up to you, this just happened to be something I had floating around, but you could go smaller or bigger. The key to making something out of this kind of packaging is to gently pry off the plastic window in which the items are housed - if you rip it off, chances are you'll rip the cardstock and lose the fun graphics that were already on the box.
RECYCLED ART TAG - INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Gently pry plastic window from backing. To do this, peel off one corner with your finger nails, then insert finger under window and carefully run along edges. Window should come off fairly easily and without great damage to packaging.
2. Set aside window. Sand cardboard all around to smooth edges, create a better surface to adhere elements to and give a slightly distressed look. You can use a sanding block from a craft company like Stampin' Up! or you can just use sanding paper, a sanding block or even an emory board - whatever happens to be handy. Use your judgment to determine how much you want to sand off.
3. Run an ink pad along the edges of the cardstock, making sure to slightly overlap so that some of the ink transfers onto the front. You can use mini ink pads or regular sized ones; I used a multicolored one to add some fun to the project. You can use dye-based inks but craft/pigment ink will give you a stronger color. In this case, craft inks are also better because they will actually stick to the slightly smooth/shiny paper.
4. I lightly dabbed the whole surface of the cardstock with the entire ink pad, but you don't need to do that - the reason for that is that I wanted to have a little bit of a mixture of colors. Other options include patterned doodles with ballpoint pen or marker; single-color ink pads; stickers etc.
5. When you look at the cardstock and the window on the top left picture, you can see that removing the window left areas where the paper was removed from the cardstock. In this case, it's actually not a bad thing - it means that the areas where I wanted to put the pictures in were more clearly defined.
Measure the areas where your pictures will go. You don't have to be precise, but it will look nicer if the size & shape of your pictures correspond to the areas marked by the window.
6. If you don't want to just put pictures on the tag, you can do what I did. I cropped the pieces of photographs I wanted to use - first with a paper trimmer, and then with craft scissors (you can find those in most craft stores or online, and they come in more designs than I can count! :) to give them a fun shape. As you can see, I wanted to mount the pictures on some patterned paper, so I cut the PAPER the size of the windows, and the pictures slightly smaller to reveal the paper underneath.
7. PAPER: The paper I used under the pictures comes from pages of an old French dictionary that I "aged". To give just about any and all paper products an older, aged or antique look, you have a few different options:
* crinkle paper, bunch it up as much and tightly as possible. unfold and repeat as necessary. gently unfold and softly dab brown/black ink pad over entire surface. this should bring out the folds, as the ink will adhere more or less in different parts of the paper. presto-change-o! antiqued paper :)
* you can also use a variety of dying options. both tea and coffee make excellent paper dyes - the less diluted, the darker the resolution. if that's too time-consuming, you can buy a variety of staining inks, such as Walnut Ink or alcohol inks.
I like to combine several of these different techniques to give my paper a "genuine" look: if you just spray or blot a bunch of ink on your paper, it's not going to get the same result.
8. Adhere cropped picture to aged paper. Here you can decide whether or not to use pop-ups/dimensionals (these are little foam pads that are self-adhesive on both sides and raise an element off of the surface - very cool!). In this case, I didn't use any dimensionals and basically just glued the picture to the paper and the whole thing to the cardstock.
9. Using a Zig Pen (this is basically like a ballpoint pen, but instead of ink it's filled with glue - awesome for reaching tiny areas, getting in between pieces etc), make random squiggles all over the project area. Really! I just ran the glue pen all over in random lines. If you don't have a Zig Pen, you can use just about any liquid glue. The benefit of having a glue pen is that the lines are very fine and don't take a long time to dry - using other types of liquid glue will also work, but with different results. If using regular glue, you can either squeeze it directly onto the areas that you want to embellish, or you can squeeze out a small quantity on a piece of scrap paper and use a tooth pick to draw lines on your project.
10. Sprinkle generously with glitter! Now, I absolutely LOVE glitter, but it's also very messy to work with - so I highly recommend putting either a piece of paper or cloth under your project so that you can collect the excess glitter afterwards. Once all the glued parts are covered in glitter (and I like to cover the whole area to make sure I get all the sticky bits), lift project slightly up and gently tap on your work area. This will shake off any glitter that isn't stuck on the paper with glue.
11. Add 3-dimensional embellishments. I added a seashell to go with the Great Escape theme and to tie in with my pictures. I also added a bird sticker on the top left, which I popped up using dimensionals.
AND VOILA! You've just saved a piece of cardstock from the trash or recycling bin, and created a wonderful piece of artwork! :)
I made this tag just for fun, to see what I could come up with - but besides having a decorative value, you can turn this kind of tag into a gift tag, scrapbooking embellishment, add to a greeting card or even frame with a favorite photograph.
If you have any questions about this project or anything else, feel free to contact me! :)
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