Crafty & thrifty collage

As I mentioned in yesterdays blog post I have recently done a little bit of selfish crafting. I wanted to decorate my mini useful (but rather plain) set of draws. I could have just painted them. I have already have set that I painted and now live on my dressing table.

Painted in gradually darker shades of Duck egg blue, to match the rest of my Bedroom decor.

Since I’ve had had the draws over a year or so I had a while to ponder over what to do, I kept thinking about doing some sort of collage, so started collecting bits n bobs that caught my eye.

I like my crafts and handmade items to have a function, I find it hard to spend a lot of time making something that’s not going to have a use, I think that’s possibly why I’ve never really done much in the way of decoupage, scrapbooking  or collage, just for the sake of it, only ever for an occasional card for a specific person. So I thought this would be a good excuse for a bit of collaging for purely decorative purposes (just because I can & I want to).  What I particularly love about creating collages is that it can cost practically nothing!

Having decided last Sunday to have a go at the collage, I gathered up the few bits and bobs that I had squirreled away (mainly a few crafty flyers) and along with a John Lewis interiors catalogue, scissors, glue, a ruler, a craft knife and cutting mat I had everything I needed to get going.
I like the idea of combining decorative patterns with photographs and I started out with quite a set idea in mind and cut out loads of items while watching Restoration Man on catch up (we do love a bit of George Clarke). Then when I started actually putting bits together my original plan went out the window and I just had a lot of fun flicking through the John Lewis catalogue and picking out bits of interesting textures and textiles and mixing them up with my images of crafty bits.

My first draw has a button image combined with a wall paper pattern.

Second draw has a colourful sewing image, from a ClothKits catalogue, with another more muted wall paper pattern.

Third draw has another colourful image from ClothKits along with an image of a pile of different textiles and a basket from a John Lewis catalogue.

My Fourth draw is simply one image from an advert for a lovely book; The Gentle Art of Stitching by Jane Brocket.

I quite liked my fifth draw, this is the draw I collect my receipts & such like in, so using an image of filing cabinets seems quite appropriate & to prevent it from being too boring I have also included a handsome cat (from a flea treatment leaflet).

As well as a cat I included an over sized cup & saucer as well as a nice retro style clock.

For the sixth draw I started chopping out lots of same size squares from the lovely textures and fabric I found with the intention of creating a paper patchwork effect. When I do patchwork I find the most enjoyable part is picking out the colours & rummaging through my fabric stash.  It was the same with my collage and once I gathered enough squares I decided to cut them in half diagonally, turning them into triangles giving me more opportunities to play around and create different shapes and patterns.

All my triangles have a little bit of pattern or texture – lovely.

I planned out the triangles and glued them on to paper as opposed to straight on to my draw, mainly to make life easier for myself and meant I could play with the colour arrangement.

Finished bottom draw – I do rather like it, even if I do say so myself.

It’s pretty amazing what you can create from an old catalogue that would otherwise be recycled and just a little bit of imagination.

Finished set of draws (well almost).

It’s pretty amazing what you can create from an old catalogue that would otherwise be recycled and just a little bit of imagination.

I quite enjoyed doing something a little different and I’m quite chuffed with the result, and now I just need to find time to seal them with a bit of PVA.