There are lots of means to integrate recycling with arts and crafts and have hours of entertainment and perhaps make a small number of holiday gifts.
One of my favorite crafts is to decoupage. The materials needed to do this are simply old magazines, a couple of scissors, some white glue and something to decorate. I've seen people use this art medium on every sort of article from wooden boxes up to queen bed head planks.
Once you've the item (or items) you need to decorate you can put them aside and begin flipping through the magazines for pictures and words that jump up at you or help convey something you would like to say. The fantastic thing about this craft is that there is no "wrong" way to do it. Some people will use an entire advertisement including the setting in the ad and others may cut out the individual or object from the background. The belief is to have an article of a page to be layered upon the object to be decorated.
After you have plenty pictures and words remove you can begin to decorate your object. The ideas and creative imagination, from this point on, are endless! Use all cut outs of flowers and birds to decorate your job, ready every picture of a dog and see how many you can discover and use all of them to decorate your recycled project!
Arrange your clippings onto the surface of whatever it is you're going to reuse or decorate and put a layer of glue over the total project. Using white glue or Mod Podge will provide you with a plain coating over your art and when that layer is dry, coat it again, and so on. The coatings of glue will protect your artwork and if you use a gloss-finish, it will have a nice shine to it, too.
I started making "Blessings Boxes" for the Christmas gifts I would give to my children's instructors. I would reuse an old shoe box, and cover the whole beyond it with remove pictures from magazines. The principle objective was to cover up the shoe brand on the outside the box with the pictures and words.
The belief behind the "Blessings Boxes" was that throughout the year, when there was a blessing in their life, maybe a ticket stub to a baseball game or a movie shared with a buddy, birthday cards, get better cards, etc. they were to place these blessings into the box. The best part is that, during that year, when they had each day where they would feel blue or needed a grin, they knew they may always open their "Blessings Box" to be reminded of the beautiful things that have happened in their life.
These gifts were the talk of the elementary school the first year I made them and I will say that at the very beginning of annually after, my children's instructors would let me know how gorgeous they thought my creations were and (wink, wink) they would not mind getting one for themselves!
The best part is that I never spent extra money making one of those gifts! It was an achievement all attributable to being recycled materials.
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