It’s nothing but bits and strips cut from junk mail and stuck to a 4 x 6 inch index card with a glue stick like little kids use, then embellished with little circles stamped on with a tube lid dipped in white paint.

In fact, all those fragments you see came from pictures of ladies’ skirts in an unsolicited mail-order catalog.

Yet I think the paste-up qualifies as a design. And don’t you think it somehow captures the essence of the deep sea? I call it “Swishy Skirt Fishies.”

It’s a mini collage!

Merriam-Webster’s defines “collage” as “an artistic composition made of various materials (as paper, cloth, or wood) glued on a surface.” The word comes from the French word “coller,” which means “to glue.”

And a mini collage? Well… it’s small!

All the mini collages you will see on this blog in coming days are pasted on 4×6 cards. Most of them are made up of nothing but glue and junk mail–with maybe a little touch of pencil or paint once in a while.

Easy peasy. And cheap! And handy to do almost anywhere.

I began this small-scale venture by leafing through a pile of catalogs I was about to discard, looking for interesting images, patterns, colors, and textures, and anything else that especially caught my eye–or my heart. Because of the small scale, most of my tear-outs fit in a business-sized envelope or two. Later I sorted them into a few more envelopes, some even smaller.

Can you see what a handy art hobby this could be, even to take traveling? And what fun collaging could be to do with your kids, or grandkids? I packed up a little tote with activities and materials last month when I went to visit Granddaughter, and everything we needed to collage together fit easily into its side pocket. Too bad I went driving off, leaving the tote inside the back door! So I didn’t get to see how much fun we would have had with it. Maybe next month…!

Collage can be light-hearted, even child-like, fun. Some collage is just plain wacky, the way unrelated objects are stuck together or placed in unexpected settings. But it can involve and depict deeper emotions than that, as future posts will show. 

One way or the other, you might feel a little prodding to go sort your mail right now, and do a little ripping, snipping, and envelope stuffing. Hmm?…

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Previous post in this series:

Day 1 Collage and 31-Days Introduction