Recycled Chipboard Packaging

Ok so today I'm going to show you another project that I made to recycle something. Yesterday, I went to a nearby town for some coffee & shopping with a friend. We went to an arts & crafts store, where I bought a chipboard album (I'll get around to posting a project for that down the line :). Well, as I've said before, I like to try and find new uses for old things - or things you'd normally just throw in the trash or recycling bin. The way I see it, not only is it a personal challenge to my creativity, but it also means that it's one less thing going to waste.

What I particularly loved with this project is that I discovered, after opening the packaging, that it actually said PLEASE RECYCLE under the chipboard album - how fabulous is that??

So you know, I can't resist experimenting with things, and it was like the challenge was staring me right in the face: so, HOW are you going to recycle me??

I started out with more or less the same process I used when I did the Recycled Art Tag in my last post by sanding down the advertising I didn't want, distressing the edges and center that I would cover up anyway, and sanding the clear plastic window where it had been glued down so that it would be easier to glue back down later.

This is what I started with:

And this is what I ended up with! How totally awesome is that? Not only did I save something from being thrown out and turned it into a piece of artwork I can now display - but on top of that, the plastic window works as a kind of shadow box. I would've loved to have had some piece of three-dimensional memorabilia to put into the "shadow box", but I still think this is pretty cool. :)

RE-cycled Art Tag

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! :)

Love Is...Never Having To Give Up On Your Dreams

Wow...it's been one of those days. I had a pretty good time crafting & chatting with a friend. We plotted our plan to take over the world with our fabulous Stampin' Up! goodies and crafty genius, laughed about everything under the sun - and punched out WAY too many cardstock tags. But later in the day it all went very, very wrong.

I was feeling bored with my blog - the layout and design wasn't really representative of my creative personality, and I'd gotten to the point where I thought: what's the point? Enter a new Blogger feature, which immediately got my attention. And being a little trigger happy, I clicked before I thought it through...and my entire blog layout was messed up! I was tried to change it back and couldn't easily revert it to the previous format - so, having already felt a little frustrated, I stupidly decided that I would just delete this thread and start with a new template. Not realizing, at the time, that deleting the thread meant deleting the entire NAME of the blog!! In the split second it took me to realize the fallout, my surprisingly fast browser had already processed my action. My blog was completely gone. I was devastated. I'm so new at this and still trying to find my way, still trying to upload pictures and turn this page into something that represents me as an artist and as a person.
So I tried to retype the blog address - which of course came up with something along the lines of "blog not found". I then decided I would just start a new blog thread with the same name - but it wouldn't let me do that. EEK!

Fast-forward a few hours and my husband called me to say that he was coming home from work. I told him about my mishap, and he said it was no big deal, that he could figure out how to retrieve it - but I wasn't buying it. So imagine my surprise and delight when, simply clicking on a button on my Blogger dashboard, revealed the magic words that turned my whole evening around: UNDELETE THIS BLOG.

It's strange how something so seemingly insignificant can be so important on a particular day...Either way, I'm so happy that I was able to recover my blog, so I'm going to make an effort to post more regularly and start putting my artwork on here so that, hopefully, I can turn this blog into something fun, creative and inspirational! :)

All She Wants To Do Is STAMP, STAMP, STAMP!!

Ok so you know how I was talking about the inspiration artists get from music, and I got on here thinking of what I could name today's post - and it just came to me as this Don Henley song immediately played in my mind:



It's so funny because my fingers were poised over the keys and I thought, All she wants to do is STAMP STAMP STAMP! as the chorus.

Today was a pretty hot day & I had a really awesome time running errands, having coffee with two fellow spouses that I'm hoping to get to now better in the weeks to come - and planning some projects to work on and share. The mailbox was generous once more and revealed another package of retired Stampin'Up sets - all about putting your own stamp on projects. I love being able to add a little element somewhere that I can date, sign or otherwise "authenticate" my artwork. Hey, you never know where your art might end up one day! :)

I've got lots to do this weekend with tidying and organizing the house so that I can get that out of the way and focus on my artwork next week. I'm itching to get all my inks and paints out, especially because I also want to try some projects from the many magazines that are threatening to take over my office.

Here's to warm sunny days, great coffee & even better company. It's in those little mundane, everyday events that you can find beauty and excitement to pour, in my case, into creative endeavors...

Playlist of an Artist

Ever since I was a child, I've had a love of music - there's a soundtrack to just about every major event in my life and everything in between. As a teen, I used to sit at my desk with my homework, music playing and often talking on the phone with a girlfriend - I actually couldn't even concentrate on homework without music! Talk about multi-tasking at its finest...

As an aspiring artist, I find both inspiration and emotion in music. Depending on the mood I'm in or the project I'm working on, I have a different playlist. Classical and new age music is good for detail-oriented tasks like cutting out intricate shapes or writing in a journal, but I love Oldies or chart toppers for just about anything artsy. I tend to listen to Etta James, crooners like Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and even big band music when I'm writing. There's something about being transported to a totally different time that just makes the words pour out!

This is the part where I have to plug iTunes - their different ways of suggesting music you might like based on past purchases is far more accurate than any other website with a similar program. Amazon and Netflix, for example, still don't have the first clue about my taste - based on over 500 rated items. EEK! So yeah, I love my iTunes!

A lot of the music I "discover" comes from either the suggestions on iTunes directly, or actually from tv shows I download and watch. If there's even a snippet of a song that sounds like something I might like, I'm on Google typing in snatched words from the lyrics to see who the artist is and what the song is called...and then it's off to my trusted iTunes to listen to a sample and, more often than not, download the song in question.

Another way that I've discovered some interesting music is through watching arts & craft videos on YouTube. I love how creative some people are beyond the "point and shoot" approach. One girl from did a really awesome video of an altered journal - the soundtrack she chose not only worked brilliantly but actually served to inspire me to look up the artist (which she had kindly inluded below the video) and gave me some brilliant ideas! Check out her video:



Today being Memorial Day, though, I wanted to share a particular montage that I discovered and absolutely love. Since a wonderful history teacher inspired a fascination and interest in WWII during my last two years in high school, I've looked for and collected items that relate to the era. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, and my husband's side of the family has a long tradition of military service. So both my interest in WWII and my love of altered art come together in this fabulous display of patriotism:



So I'm going to end this post by wishing everyone and all a safe and happy Memorial Day!

All Introductions Aside...

After much contemplation, pondering, and not an insignificant amount of frustration induced by craft elements and glue residue that seems to end up somewhere entirely different than its intended destination, I decided to take the plunge and head into cyberspace. So here I am! Is it a blog? Is it a journal? Is it an amalgam of rantings and ravings by someone hyped up on too much caffeine (thank God for extra shots of espresso)? Yes to all of it - and then some.

Here's my story. Once upon a time there was a crazy little girl who didn't understand the concept of conformity. When other kids played with mud, she made funny doodles. As a teen, she snubbed the call to arms by smoking bandits and wrote short stories instead. In college, textbooks and hours spent reading, proof-reading, editing and typing - and, yes, copious amounts of caffeine - were followed by inspiring travels and the meeting of minds all around the globe. Ah yes, the folly of youth!
But I digress...Fast-forward a decade or so, and I'm a happily married military wife with an uber-active creative mind. This blog is foremost about my adventures as an artist, but also as a wife, a girl-about-town, an inquisitive woman looking for inspiration in the world around me.

I hope you'll enjoy the projects I'm going to share with you - mine and those of others that I think are too amazing & wonderful not to share. Feel free to comment, make suggestions, ask questions or just drop me a line because you love coffee too! :)