calendar collages

Last year I was given a pile of old gardening magazines; I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do with them, but I held onto them because I just had a feeling that they’d come in handy at some point.

It took a while, but I was right.

believe it or not, these millions of scraps of paper were somewhat organized

My Pinterest feed started showing me more and more beautiful collage artwork and it sparked a random creative interest in me — the kind that I get really obsessed with for a short time.

I didn’t have a clear picture of what I wanted to create yet, but I had a general idea, so I spent some time going through the magazines and cutting out all the photos that caught my eye (gardening magazines were perfect for this project).

I then split the pictures up into piles that felt like they shared the same general vibe, carefully picking through everything to make things a bit less overwhelming…because there were a ton of pieces to sift though.

I started gluing butterfly wings onto people, creating settings and landscapes with layers of pictures popped up with 3D pop dots, and filling empty spaces with carefully-chosen book pages and quotes.

I was really happy with how my first one came out, although I still wasn’t sure exactly what I’d use it for until I realized that it’d make the perfect calendar page.

Of course I held this idea kinda loosely in my mind, because I knew that it required me to make eleven more of these collages, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d want to be crouched over on the floor, going cross-eyed looking at flowers, leaves, and random lettuce plants.

I didn’t have to worry though, because I ended up making more than I needed* (seventeen in total) in just a handful of days.

_{*who could’ve predicted}