Things in this world are not always what they seem. Collage often capitalizes on this concept.

This mini collage gives an example.

The name gives its secret away. But if you hadn’t read the title, would you really think what you see above is more rugs than rocks, and home interior backgrounds entirely instead of sea and sky? In fact, what’s represented as the most rugged peaks and most breath-stealing descents are cut from pictures of carpet pieces. The actual mountains in the collage stand much more smoothed by time and weather.

Yet the mix of the two takes the viewer much more into a “world of the imagination,” as my one grandson would have put it in his kindergarten days. And that’s good for our heads, methinks. I think that’s the attraction of collage: the way it can lead us to 1) think outside the box more and 2) consider how the appearance of things in life may be other than what a first glance seems to say.

Take a mind trip in this collage today, and if you like, go back and explore earlier ones in this series using surprising objects and materials to represent something quite different from themselves. In the list below of previous posts I’ve marked with a ** those containing “deceptions” you can detect and consider. (Have fun!)

Day 1 Mini Collage and 31-Days Introduction

**Day 2 Collage: Nothing-But-Junk Fish

**Day 3 Collage: What Grabs Your Heart?

Day 4 Collage: Why I Chose to do this 31 Days–Really

**Day 5 Collages: On Being Transparent

**Day 6 Collage: Salute to Birds and Dragonflies

**Day 7 Collage: Got it Made in the Shade

Collage Day 8: Three Good Children’s Books to Inform Our Lives

Day 9 Collage: Smiles, Smiles (What Makes You Smile?)

**Day 10 Collage: Which Way is Out?