Good evening!

Now that I have been not working for the past few weeks, I have been looking at my art supplies in a new way. You see in the past, whenever I wanted any new fancy-schmancy arts or crafts do-dad, I would just run over to whichever art store I wanted and picked it up! It would then proceed to be taken up to the art studio, put it in its new proper location, and then nothing. That’s it! Nothing! I wouldn’t do anything with it.

Now that I see that money is not coming in, like it had been, I realized that I have to start being more economical with my art supplies, and that got me to thinking about all of the miscellaneous stuff that has been lying around. What could I recycle into my art play???

Soooo…this morning, I spent some time taking an old box and turning it into two different art journals!!

I think they turned out rather cute, and they were so easy to create!

I was so excited by how they turned out that I decided I would look around and see what other household things I could turn into some interesting art journaling backgrounds.

This was a napkin that I happened to have in my copious amounts of supplies. Note to those who use napkins in your work: if you use a two-ply napkin, you will have an easier time using it if you carefully peel the two layers apart, and just use the layer with the pattern on it! I discovered that the hard way!! 🙂

This background was created using a bunch of old checks that I was waiting to take down to the shredder! I tore them up myself and then randomly glued them down to my page using gel medium. Using three colors of acrylic paint and a palette knife, this technique turned out looking a bit like dyed leather. I rather like it!

I am not sure what I am going to do next on these backgrounds, but using unexpected materials in new ways is something that I am going to have to try more in my future projects!

What kinds of recycled materials do you like to use in your art journaling/mixed media art projects???

Here is to a FABULOUS evening!!! 🙂

If you want to have a different life, live differently!!