Friday, November 4, 2011

Recycled Art

Sometimes  inspiration comes in twos.   As in combining two unlike things into one. I came across this art idea  and immediately thought "Pumpkins!"    Well, not pumpkins specifically, pumpkin templates would be more accurate.    While I love making use of junk mail, making stencils - not so much.   For  Halloween I went on the hunt for some fabulous pumpkin carving stencils and found many that had very little to do with Halloween.  But they would be great for other things.   My favorite finds were at
  1. Paper Pumpkins
  2. DLTK
  3. Pumpkin Glow
  4. Better Homes & Gardens
Because I enjoy making things difficult for myself, I opted to go with the Sleeping Cat.

Then I used a hobby knife to cut out the template.

"Sleeping Cat" cut out


Then I cut paper strips from junk mail.   I cut  a lot of paper strips.   Then I cut an empty snack bar box apart keeping one side plus some of the flaps  and arranged the strips on it.   I elected to glue over the printed side so I wouldn't have to see the box printing forever.  (And if you use these for gifts, it would look less recycled.)

recycled cardboard box

glued paper strips


Now here's where your choice of template design becomes important.  Lots of large open spaces?  Lots of loose paper flaps in the center?  Both are not good things.  As you go to glue the template over your cardboard base, all these loose bits of paper will wiggle around and fight you.  (And snicker.  I'm sure I heard snickering.)


Your glue is nothing to me. I laugh at your glue.  Haha!



But eventually I persevered and everything was glued down.



So then I trimmed off all the trailing edges of paper.

Huh, it's so boxy.



Well, at least it's not boxy anymore.


Well, I guess for a first attempt, it went pretty well.  I'd like to try it again with a better template and perhaps planned out colors of paper.  It would look interesting with shades of one or two colors I think.

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