Cut and Paste

I love mixed media art and collage. Seeing all the crafty things Jessie and Buddug have done with bits and pieces and odds and ends made me want to pull out the scissors and glue and get to placing and pasting. I went through a collage phase a while back and made this little one above, which shows my mom sometime in the mid-fifties in a photo booth with a friend of hers. Remember the Paper Quilt Project? Oh so many great collages! My little gal never made it to the site, which I think was supposed to be in the December section, but it was great to be a part of it. I would have liked to have that quilt myself. I have plenty of paper scraps in my craft box (the tie tie papers, what's left of them anyway, are my favorites), but I can't help but look around to see what other fun scraps are out there. I love looking for vintage paper, postcards, pictures, ads, paper bags and the like at flea markets and thrift stores, but sometimes it's just fun to buy a cute paper pack that's already sorted with a bunch of great bits. I love these paper packs, shown below, from Lovely Sweet William on etsy. Maybe collage Christmas cards are in order this year.

Artist Trading Cards

A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to be part of an ATC group (artist trading card group). Sounded like fun to me, so I said yes. Each month there's a theme, and each person in the group makes one card for every other person based on the theme. This month's theme was your birth year + or - 10 years. I was born in 1975, so I could have done anything related to 1965 or 1985. I decided on 1985. It was hard for me to nail down my idea. The possibilities were open and endless. I had a few ideas that just wouldn't have worked on something that had to be 2.5 x 3.5, which is the size the card has to be. I decided I wanted to do something related to 80's fashion, but what? I was looking at random 80's pictures online and thought something related to breakdancing would be great. Then I was reading Amy's blog and found the perfect image from Breakin' 2 (which actually came out in 1984, but that's okay--weren't people breakin' all though the mid 80's?). I love how it turned out. I wanted to make it look like a pop-up with glitter beaming behind the dancers. Initially I wanted to cut them all out and put the glitter behind the three of them in different glitter colors, but I didn't have time to cut all of them out. I like the way just the girl turned out in the center as the one that pops up. I can't wait till I get the rest of the ATCs in the mail when I get home. We're off to Japan now. Gotta run. See you from the other side of the world tomorrow, or the next day, when I recover from our 11 hour flight!