D Is For… Decoupage!

One of my favorite knitting books is by Leigh Radford, called Alterknits:  Imaginative Projects and Creativity Exercises.  She has a ton of really great ideas.  One of the last of them is the best use of yarn ball bands ever.  She covered a dress form with them.  I think the effect is surprising in its simple beauty.

Until I read her suggestions, I didn\’t know what decoupage meant.  There\’s a whole artform out there surrounding it and you can get special glues and papers for it.  Basically, it\’s covering objects with glued paper, then applying something that gives it a high gloss.  There\’s a great tutorial at WikiHow and a bunch of other links that I didn\’t take the time to delve into, but if you google \”decoupage\” you\’ll find them.

What I find particularly exciting about this particular type of art is that you can use ephemera and found objects from around the house.  This can create unique artwork that is also a snapshot in time – catalogs, magazines, newsletters, those circulars that come from big box stores each week – anything can become grist for the mill.  In today\’s day and age, finding art that we can make that\’s in line with the idea of \”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle\” is a positive thing.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What kinds of things might you memorialize like this?