One of the very first quote stamps I created for Stamp of Excellence, Inc. 20 years ago was "Creative minds are seldom tidy" 304A.
You can find this on our web at stampofexcellence.com.
These words are never more true than when we have a table top destroying class like yesterdays! For me, some of the most fun classes for everyone to play with is when we pull out stacks of old magazines and search for the perfect pictures, words and graphics to collage our art project. Our Go Green Tag class was an experiment in Upcycling. What is upcycling you ask? Upcycling is taking an existing item, like our magazine pages, and turning it, or them, into something better. Take a look and see what some crazy fun ladies idea on upcycling looks like.
The first project followed closely to my blog spot from April 6, 2011, Flowers for a Special Day 3025G. If you go back and look it up you can get the "How 'to's" and create just like all of us yesterday. I have several pictures to let you see what these amazing women came up with.
This pooch on his back cracks me up! And I loved the gold/yellow rose paper Bobbie found for her tag and Tim Holtz® butterfly.
Sabrina's lavender tag and ribbon was over the top in color, and her bright yellow/orange poster fit her personality perfectly! But, what do you think of the pup Carol found to go with her word Seriously?
Our second project was open to whatever each of the ladies wanted to collage; a card, tag or poster. It is so much fun to see what everyone comes up with in a class like this. One of the best parts of collage art from magazines is that there is so little expense to create these upcycled works of art! The main supplies you need, except lots of magazines, is adhesives, glue or tape, and a base card stock, bag or book for applying all the treasures you find.
This poster Pat layered looks so much like our Autumn in the Rocky Mountains here in Southern Colorado. Her colors where wonderful and warm plus the card stock she found to frame this beauty was perfect!
One last look into our expressive upcycling. These are Jackie's two projects. Even though the "S" on Special Day didn't emboss perfectly, not enough heat time, we were able to go back with a pigment ink pen and redraw and emboss it to all most good as new perfection. We say in stamping, "all mistakes are happy mistakes" because this is how we learn new tricks and ideas. Jackie didn't know about an embossing pen before yesterday and now everyone does!
Thanks for taking a peek into our creative mess yesterday. I hope it will inspire your own "upcycling" adventures. You have nothing to loose, and I'm guessing you will get as hooked as we are on reinventing new and better from old and about to be thrown away!
Look inside yourself for your own creative bliss ~ I promise you'll have fun!
Judi