Recycled Catalog and Scrap Paper Greeting Card

Here's a look at the finished project:

I started with one of my old drawings but you could use a page from a kids color book or some clip art. Anything that's big enough to glue bits of catalog pages to.

I found it easiest to glue things is the right places and then cut my finished design out making any changes along the way that I needed to. I ended up changing the shape a bit in order to get the petals from the garden catalog pictures to fit.

Next, I looked for card stock and paper pieces big enough to make a card out of.

Catalog clippings inspire Dala horse designs

These clippings were designs on dishes in a cooking catalog. Pasting them up like this helps me keep track of the sorts of designs I hope to pursue in the future and shows me what I was planning to do with them.

When I've got time I'll begin by tracing the shape of the horse on to another sheet of paper and beginning to draw or paint some of the designs from the clippings in the actual shapes, sizes and locations that I would want them to be when painted on the wooden horses.

In the meantime I'll pack them away and move back to the other projects in progress here.

Learning Polish Folk Art from "junk" mail

I get a few cooking catalogs which as you can imagine is kind of funny considering the fact that I hate to cook and rarely venture into the kitchen (always with disastrous results, but that's another story). Anyway, as I was saying "I get a few cooking catalogs" and love to look at the pottery and china patterns so I began to clip them out and practice drawing and painting some of the patterns on some of my letters and pictures or wooden items I'd been working on.

Yes, I always recycle everything afterwards. The catalogs go in the recycle bin and the pictures I've clipped go into letters and my sketchbooks where they're enjoyed by a number of people in different ways and lead to other projects.

This is going to be fun!

I started trying a few of the designs in colored pencil and will be using this to write a letter on to share my little art project with an elderly aunt. I think you'll find that mail like this makes almost anyone happy and each time I do it I learn a bit more about the designs I'm using so it does us both good.