Crafty Things: Hallowe'en Collage

One of my favorite crafty-type projects when I was in high school was making collages.

Art was one of my favorite classes in high school (I bet you couldn't have guessed that), and when we had to make a collage for class that respresented "you", I became sort of hooked.

I made several more for my bedroom, just for fun. I even made a collage that actually encircled my entire room. I mounted it on the wall just below the ceiling; kind of like a wall paper border. I wish I had a photograph of how it looked.

Recently I visited a place called Hawthorne Hill Farm, which is near where I live. It looks like an old farm, but it's now a place where crafters and artists can sell their handmade items. The booths are set up inside a large barn and another outbuilding. I took some pictures of that visit, which I will share soon. I saw something there that inspired me to make some wall art to be part of my already extensive Hallowe'en decor.

Here is a picture of one of the finished collages that I made. The central piece is an antique cabinet card photograph which had been stamped on and had some cute paper witches' hats decoupaged onto the woman and her children in the picture. I bought the cabinet card this way at a crafter's booth at Hawthorne Hill Farm, then I put it together with some scrapbooking paper and stamps and embellisments from my stamping closet. After it was assembled, I placed it in a black frame I bought for 50% off at Michael's.

This is the second one. Again, I bought the cabinet card, which had a spider-web and the "Happy Halloween" stamped on it, and a paper witch's hat and kitty in a pumpkin glued onto the card. I added the rest to complete the collage. On the back of the cabinet card, the subject's name was written in pencil (Mary Flemming), so I made sure to add a little tag on the front with her name written in flowing script. The lady that I bought the cabinet cards from said she felt a little bad "desecrating" the pictures and hoped the ghosts of the people in the pictures wouldn't come haunt her for making their serious portraits whimsical. I told her "better you than me" and we laughed about it. Then I told her,"Better to make them into interesting art than tossed into the garbage."

After they were done, Erik hung them in the entry hall above the piano for me.

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