My 1.5 Inch Square Collages

Here is the scan of the bunch of 1.5 inch square collages that I made for a mail swap on Swap-bot.com.

I made these in one sitting. Here is some information about how I made these.

The bases were food container boxes which I repurposed.

The background was either text from pages of foreign language dictionaries (purchased for 50 cents at library used book fundraiser sales) or they were scraps left over from other recent projects.

I then adhered either mulberry paper scraps (from a little package purchased at Wal Mart) or tissue paper scraps (from the craft store). The colored paper is what gives these their color.

Some have little images clipped from scraps from other projects. Some of these are junk mail scraps from a recent junk mail challenge ATC swap.

I snipped words taken from yet more scraps that I had laying around.

Some have little circles of tissue paper which are sold for a small amount of money in the party aisle of the dollar store and are supposed to be used as confetti at parties. I liked the effect of using more than one colored circle on top of the other so that they changed color (it may be harder to see these in the scanned image). I also liked using them as a way to highlight the text.

Some of the colorful images are from children's books which were scraps from a recent challenge to use children's book images to make ATCs with for a Swap-Bot.com swap.

Also there are some 1973 Valentine's stickers which I found stashed away at my grandmother's house.

The images of the insects and butterflies are from an old, falling apart insect field guide book (by Golden) which I bought for 25 cents at a library used book fundraiser sale.

Some had edging added with either a Sharpie marker or with a gold marker from the craft store.

All of these are collaged. I did not use any inks such as rubber stamp inks or rubber stamped images.

It was fun to sit down and use scraps to make these.

Everything is adhered with Golden brand acrylic gel medium in soft gloss. This product, when used with tissue paper or mulberry paper, makes the paper translucent.

When I trimmed these I ended up with other scraps which I used to make a set of three abstract ATCs which I will scan and share with you on another day.

Today after scanning them I packed some up to send out for this swap, one envelope is on its way to Australia and the other is going to Montana.