Earth Day Craft!

Hello everyone!

I know I have been gone for a while, but things have been a little crazy around here. We had a really nasy hail storm out of the blue, and my car took some pretty serious damage. So, we've been dealing with insurance and body shops and rental cars...what a nightmare!

On top of that, my work does a huge Earth Day event every year, and I've been pulled in on several different committees to help with things. One of the committees involves a Recycled Styled Fashion Show (fun!!!) and I'm the committee seamstress. Which means mostly consulting and helping groups get their outfits together. I've also been tapped to make the men's costumes (we are going for a rat pack theme with fedoras, and vests [because suit jackets made from paper were pretty hard, lol]). So, I'm working on those right now, and may post a few pictures when I finish them.

Another organization I'm involved with is doing a recycled art silent auction. This is an idea I'm absolutely in love with, and another thing I've been super busy with.

I wanted to share one of the crafts I made for the Earth Day Art Auction (which sounds a lot fancier than recycled crafts show, haha)

 

 This piece of art uses old magazine ads/junk mail to create a really cool layered look. My pinspiration comes from this blog post. At first, I was really upset because my piece didn't come out as nice as her's did (even though I think mine looks great, and, like most art pieces, looks wonderful from futher away, haha). After I had finished, I really started looking at her pictures, and I'm pretty sure she cheated. If you look at her stain and paint brush strokes, you can see where they continue behind the magazine scrap image. Once I explain how the craft is made (if you haven't already read it on her blog) then you'll see how this doesn't make any sense. I think she painted her canvas and then glued down her magazine scraps to make it look nicer, which is fine because it looks great. But, if that if what you are going to do, then blog about how to do that. Don't set up unrealistic expectations for a craft that you yourself couldn't even do. All of my crafts are 100% real the way I explain them. The only liberties I take are photoshoping to brighten the colors because my shitty camera phone makes it hard to see the details sometimes. I don't edit away parts I don't like, or lie about my process. What you see from me is totally real.

Okay. Sorry about the rant.......

Let's talk about how to make this recycled piece.

What you're going to need is:

A canvas (of any size)

An old magazine or a pile of junk mail (probably about a week's worth, if you get as much as I do, haha)

Mod Podge

Scissors

About half a bottle of paint (depending on your canvas size) (I used some leftovers from another project)

Stencil paper (like this I picked up at Michael's for another craft) 

A silhouette of your choice

First, cut your magazine pictures up. We did strips, but you can also do blobs or whatever you feel comfortable with. You want to pick bright colors, and cut out any white spots. You should also avoid colors that are the same as whatever paint you are using, because it will hurt the image later.

Next, start glueing them down with the Mod Podge. I found that if I layed down a thin layer of Mod Podge, then put down my strip, then put another thin layer on top of that, it worked great. Cover the entire canvas this way. (note, my sister, niece and I made 3 of these. The first one we randomly glued the strips down. The second and third we tried to mostly stick to straight lines, and this worked much better. However, the pictures are from the first canvas where everything is glued down randomly)

Also note: the strips are going to pucker up. This is totally okay. Do not worry about making them lie flat!!

Set aside and allow to dry. (the first one died over night because we were tired, haha. The next two we did within 20 minutes I think. As long as the Mod Podge has turned clear, you are good to go for the next step).

While drying, print out a silhouette you like. We just googled "bird silhouette" because we knew we wanted to do birds.

This was the silhouette we picked, and I love how pretty it is. =D  We actually ended up using two different ones because we had a large canvas. But we basically just flipped this one upside down and stracedit from a different angle to get the two different branches.

Then, trace onto your stencil paper. It doesn't have to be perfect, mine obviously wasn't. (ignore the stuff in the top left corner. I made a mistake the first time and just reused the sheet, haha). Note that I did not like the way the heart-shape leaves looked when I traced them. Even though I loved them in the silhouette, they just weren't working, so I decided to go with more traditional leaves.

And cut it out. (I think this picture is actually the second tree branch we did. The above pic is the flipped image, this is the original image. If you look, you can see they are the same tree branch, just upside down from one another...I'm all about the easy way)

By this time your Mod Podge should be dry, and your canvas is ready to paint. The reason I chose this stencil paper is because it is adhesive. So, peel off the paper backing and stick the stencil down on your canvas, making sure to go back over and rub out any air bubbles that you see. Leave a little bit of the base of the branch hanging off for easy peeling later.

Once your stencil is pressed down nice and tight, paint over it. It took 2-3 layers of paint to get a good cover on the canvas. On the first one, we only did 2 layers, and we had some magazine color show through. I loved it! On the other two we wanted a more striking image, so we did 3 coats, which completely covered the magazines.

You can see where the permanant marker we used to trace on the paper started to rise up through the paint. I thought that was kind of neat (easily amused, lol).

While the paint is still damp (not wet, but definitely don't wait until it dries!!) peel the stencil off.

Touch up any areas that may have had problems, and you're done. Note that on one of my birds, I didn't press the stencil down enough, and I had a little leakage. So, I killed the bird, so to speak, and painted over it after I was finished. I also had the problem that I didn't press one of my branches down enough, and paint obscured part of it. So, I took a few different colored permanant markers and filled it in with color blocks. You can barely tell. I bet you can't identify where on the canvas I did it... lol

On the first canvas (the one pictured above) we also went back in with some sandpaper and sanded over the wrinkles. It gave it a little more of a distressed look, which I love!





These are the next two that we did.

For this one, we actually did another one first, and my sister HATED the way the image came out. So, we decided to start over and junk the whole thing. The problem was that we felt guilty just throwing out a canvas, so we stripped off all of the magazine strips. They left behind some color reside from where they were glued down, and I loved the way it looked. We decided not to glue down new strips and just paint over it the way it was. While the red was still wet, I added some paint splatters in a cream color. This one is, easily, my favorite... I'm glad I decided not to trash the messed up canvas!

I like that this one gives you a sense of how we glued down the strips after the first canvas. If you look closely, you can see that we started in one corner and then fanned out our strips from there. It gave the image a really cool striped look that I think gives it some character. It is very different from the first one, and still very beautiful :)

So now you have it. An easy earth day project using recycled magazines or junk mail. This one can easily be done with kids, and comes out really beautiful (I think).