For a Valentine's craft, I thought it would be fun to show our planet some LOVE, and create a project using only reclaimed materials.
I have been super inspired by Christy Tomlinson's videos, lately. Have you seen them? Christy does amazing collage art, using stamps and markers and paints and stencils and found materials to create amazing background canvases, then she cuts and pastes and draws girls or houses or birds or whatever onto her backgrounds. The results are beautiful. Check out Christy's blog HERE.
My stuff tends to be a bit (okay, a LOT) less loose than Christy's, so I've been experimenting with working more "free-form". What better way to experiment than with valentine decorations, right? I don't -- for ONE minute -- consider my little valentines to be in Christy's class. They are just a little baby step in loosening up, but I would love to eventually work up the nerve to introduce mixed media into my drawing and blur the lines a bit more between craft and design and art....
We have been inundated with cardboard boxes, lately, so I wanted to recycle the cardboard in my project. I still have lots of book pages left from my woven star projects, so I wanted to use those, too.
Each valentine base was cut, free-hand, from a piece of recycled cardboard that had the top layer peeled away to reveal the corrugated texture. Then the book page layers were added, and layered with torn pieces of cardboard.
The book page layers are rolled, cut, torn, crimped or scrunched -- just do whatever works! Glue the hearts onto a bit of leftover string or ribbon and embellish with markers or stamps, and you have a pretty little Valentine's Garland that cost virtually nothing. And the best part of this project? It's truly easy on the planet!
I have been super inspired by Christy Tomlinson's videos, lately. Have you seen them? Christy does amazing collage art, using stamps and markers and paints and stencils and found materials to create amazing background canvases, then she cuts and pastes and draws girls or houses or birds or whatever onto her backgrounds. The results are beautiful. Check out Christy's blog HERE.
My stuff tends to be a bit (okay, a LOT) less loose than Christy's, so I've been experimenting with working more "free-form". What better way to experiment than with valentine decorations, right? I don't -- for ONE minute -- consider my little valentines to be in Christy's class. They are just a little baby step in loosening up, but I would love to eventually work up the nerve to introduce mixed media into my drawing and blur the lines a bit more between craft and design and art....
Each valentine base was cut, free-hand, from a piece of recycled cardboard that had the top layer peeled away to reveal the corrugated texture. Then the book page layers were added, and layered with torn pieces of cardboard.
The book page layers are rolled, cut, torn, crimped or scrunched -- just do whatever works! Glue the hearts onto a bit of leftover string or ribbon and embellish with markers or stamps, and you have a pretty little Valentine's Garland that cost virtually nothing. And the best part of this project? It's truly easy on the planet!
Do you LOVE to craft with recycled materials?