Decoupage Spring Tray

This tray started life as a wood box that our Melissa & Doug toys came in. Rather than throw out or recycle the box, I painted white with a touch of yellow, and decoupaged it with some SEI Field Notes papers.  After seeing the tray, I think I'm going to add some little feet on the bottom to raise it up a bit off the table.

The bottles are beer bottles rescued from the recycling bin and painted, then covered with some trim I already had.

Total cost for both is ZERO as everything is from the recycling bin & on hand in my craft room.

Gallery at the Scrap Exchange

I am so excited to have several of my collages hanging at the Scrap Exchange! All of the works in the gallery are made with recycled and reused materials.  There were some really cool sculpture and weaving pieces, as well as quilts made from scrap fabric.

Here is my little section of the gallery:

Lorax Kid's Collage

Here is another project with upcycled materials from the Cary Creative Center:

Before:

After:

I'll be teaching this collage as a kids' class at the Cary Creative Center on April 18. Should be lots of fun to help some little kids make their very own Lorax collages!

Upcycled Spring Collage Card

I have started volunteering at the Cary Creative Center (C3), a new reuse/scrap store in Cary, NC.  Similar to the Scrap Exchange in Durham, NC, C3 takes cast-off materials that would otherwise be trashed and makes them available to re-use.

All of these materials were picked up at the C3 shop:

I then turned these into a lovely collage card for Easter:

Birdcage Cigar Box Collage

This shadow box collage is made in a cigar box with upcycled vintage book & magazine pages and images. The box has been sanded, painted, and lined with Japanese Washi paper.

- Susan

Library Notebooks

These notebooks have a library theme. The one on the left has a collage bookshelf cover, and the inside pages are vintage card catalog cards.

The book on the right has a laminated card catalog card for the cover, and blank index card sheets for the pages.

Perfect for the book lover!

-Susan

Cigar Box Collage

This collage is created on the lid of a wood cigar box, with holes drilled and threaded with twine for hanging.

The background is a mix of original vintage papers and printed vintage images, covered with gesso, paints and inks.

FLY is spelled out using old Scrabble tiles, and the focal point bird is painted orange with some distressed and silver accents.

- Susan

(this lovely bird is posted at Collage Obsession)

Upcycled Wallpaper

Yes, I said wallpaper!

I used some wallpaper pieces found at a scrap resale store to make these cards. They wallpaper had great color and pattern, so the challenge was finding ribbon and other embellishments to coordinate.

The bird & leaf cards are all-occasion, and the tan card has a "thinking of you" tag with checkmark options to choose from.

- Susan

Envelope Notebooks

These are found airmail envelopes glued together with paper pages stapled in. These make a tall skinny notebook that (I think!) looks very hip.

As usually happens with me, each notebook has different papers inside.

- Susan

Floral Notebook

This notebook was a thrift store find. I ripped off the existing front and back cover pages and recovered the existing chipboard with patterned floral paper.

I then added the ribbon and created the double punched flower with a center stamp. I also added a little "To Do" banner to give the notebook a purpose.

This notebook is posted at the Tuesday Trigger Winter Blossoms Challenge.

-Susan

Miss You Card

This card was created using the layout at the What If Wednesday Sketch Challenge. It is also entered at the Anything Goes Challenge.

The card and background sections are created with cardstock. The front layer is a shipping tag that has been inked. The sentiment is stamped onto a scrap of ledger paper and attached with patterned tape.

The tag and ledger paper on this card are both office scraps that I picked up at one of my favorite thrift stores.

-Susan

While You Were Out

I found a stack of the pink "While you were out" message pads at a resale store and decided to dress them up. I created custom covers out of upcycled chipboard then added embellishments.

These would have looked lovely on my desk back when I was an Administrative Assistant.

-Susan

Disk Notepad

I found a giant barrel full of these old 3 1/2 in floppy disks at one of my very favorite stores, The Scrap Exchange (more on them later)! Since they already have a hole in the upper left corner, I knew I could turn them into a cool one-ring notepad.

Some of the notepads have plain paper inside, others have lined, graph or other interesting paper from old books that I've found. I particularly like the paper from old accounting and record keeping pads.

-Susan

Vintage & Upcycled Notebooks

One of my favorite things to do is scout out thrift stores and other resale shops for old books and paper that I can make new again. I also rescue plenty of stuff from the recycle bin when creating notebooks.

If the pages in a book become old and brittle, the cover may still be usable. Old magazines can be cut up (or photocopied) to save their old images from the trash heap.

It's fun to mix and match pieces and come up with a new notebook that's one of a kind!

- Susan

Paper Pieced Bookpage flower

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm trying the Japanese stab-binding method for my notebooks. This book at a wallpaper remnant for a front cover with a coordinating card stock back cover. The binding is a thin brown ribbon.

I paper pieced the oversized flower embellishment using a Scrapbooks, etc pattern cut out with my craft scissors. The paper I used is from a vintage scientific education book about flowers. I love this old book paper because it's such nice thick paper with a great off-white color. The center of the flower is finished off with an old button.

-Susan

Garden Journal

This mixed media garden journal is handmade with upcycled papers and monthly dividers. I've added paint, chipboard accents, garden quotes, stamping and a few other embellishments. I really love the way it turned out, especially the beautiful cover.

-Susan

Stab bound Notebook

I made my first book today using the Japanese stab-binding method, aided by this great youtube video. Once you get the hang of it, the sewing technique isn't too hard.

This book uses cardstock front & back covers with vintage dot-matrix paper for the book pages. The binding is a glittery green ribbon that I had leftover from Christmas. The cover embellishment is from a notecard that I found in my supply stash.

Can't wait to practice this style some more!

-Susan

Heart-shaped Map

I love old maps - funny, since my sense of direction is terrible! On this card, I used a map page torn from an old European travel guide.

I folded the map into a rosette, then hand-cut it into a heart shape. That part was tricky and the heart I ended up with is a lot smaller than the rosette I started with!

The sentiment is hand-stamped with individual letters because I didn't have a sentiment stamp that said exactly what I wanted, but this sentiment really makes the card perfect to me.

This card is posted in the Moxie Fab "Map to your Heart" Challenge.

-Susan