i had some old film rolls from back in the day when film dominated…before our digital world took over. so here is a small little piece i put together with an old canvas, old films strips, some paint, some detailed design paper, medium glaze, a stencil of wings, and of course, those little nespresso pods.
your trash turned to ART.
on one of my ride-abouts, someone had placed their entire kitchen counter/sink out on the street corner. i was on my bicycle, so i couldn’t take much of the treasure, but i took one of the smaller bathroom drawers, knowing i could make a cute little shelf out of it.
before:
so i painted it red:
then i just put some patterned paper as a background and some stripes of paper elsewhere…sticking it on with medium glaze.
and voila:
and there it is hanging in my office next to the other shelf i made out of a dresser drawer awhile back.
more trashieART to come..
here is a recap of what trashieART has been up to the last several months….turning trash into ART!
HARD AT WORK
more to come….
my friend katie has been wanting to make some upcycle art ever since she saw trashieART having so much fun on the jane velez-mitchell show. so we finally got together and had our own little upcycle art party. we turned my living room into a little art studio, so to speak.
with mothers day coming up on the horizon, katie decided to create something for her mom. she started out with an old painted canvas i had, and no longer wanted. so i told katie she could re-use the canvas however she wanted. and so began her creative mind a running.
katies mom loves dogs. with that in mind, here is the brilliant art piece katie made:
items used:
1. old used canvas
2. used file folder that the wing and heart stencils were made out of.
3. glue
4. paint
5. scissors
5. paper, computer, and printer (she printed out the quote by will rogers, which she found online).
meet the artist, katie:
thanks katie…for such a fun monday ART night!! your mom is going to love her mom’s day gift!
ME AND JANE
my neighbor and friend, kari, found this gigantic old canvas in an alley. how kind it was of her to bring it home for me. the canvas was an old faded sort of orange splatter painted piece. i wanted a black canvas, so i sprayed it all black and it sat around my apartment for months, waiting to be transformed into something. but what?
my girlfriend, jane, was eager for me to do something with this old canvas. but i just didn’t know where to start….. until jane came up with a great idea….a maze. a simple maze. jane is very creative herself. what a great and fun idea! so the last time she was in town, we spent a night making a maze out of used nespresso pods. it was quite a fun little duo project. after we finished laying the pods out on the canvas, we stopped for the night. jane left soon after. and here i had this giant canvas with loose pods blocking my living room floor. and i let it sit there for two weeks. i finally glued the pods on a couple of nights ago! and voila…
and there you have it. more trash=ART from trashieART.
thanks for stopping by.
i was doing some research for work, and i ran across this image that strangely resembles my friend, annie.
annies doppelgänger. i wanted to make something with it.
annie, as i see her, is a dark, mysterious woman. she’s a thinker. an artist. a young, talented force. i look at her sometimes from a distance, and her head is down. she’s thinking about something. she looks like the girl in the picture (which is stencil art not an actual photograph). deep in thought. sad? scared? uncertain? confident? dreaming? i don’t know what she is pondering. but i’d often like to know. she is curious.
so here we go…
1. the board was found in an alley (i think it’s a piece of a dresser drawer.) here is what it looked like originally:
2. so i painted it
3. then i printed out the annie doppelgänger:
4. next i took glazing medium and i covered the board with a thin layer, and then put the image where i wanted it, and covered the picture with glazing medium as well. (acts as a clear glue). i also added a bit of color to the image with some paint…mixing silver and red together to get a shimmer pink-ish color.
5. next i took one of my old paperback books that i no longer need/use, and cut out sentences from the book, to use as the background. i first spread on a thin layer of glazing medium onto the board, then placed each sentence one by one where i wanted it to lay, and put more glazing medium on top, and smoothed it out with my finger to get out any big bubbles. i did this is small sections.
6. i took some black and pink used and cleaned out nespresso pods and figured out a design i wanted to use for this. i came up with a cross. not as a religious symbol, but rather a symbol of protection. that’s the way i choose to view it at least. i crushed a few of the pods to get some depth.
7. i then glued the pods on, and voila. annies doppelgänger trashieART is complete.
i hope she likes it.
thanks for stopping by and checking out my trashieART. where trash=ART.
it’s a square kinda sunday.
geometrical shapes. simple. easy. clean. and you really can’t go wrong with shapes used in art.
so today i chose to make a very simple, color-coded, geometrical trashieART piece with my many used nespresso pods. i quite like the outcome.
it’s about simplicity.
the process:
used nespresso pods all cleaned out and waiting to be made into something new:
the crunching process. anything with a flat hard surface will do the trick to squash these little bits of aluminum.
and then i simply glued the squashed pods onto a painted canvas in a design of my choice.
and here is the finished product. it’s simple and to the point:
your trash turned to ART. give it a try.
thanks for stopping by. till next time…
i had another old canvas i wanted to cover up by making some trashieART. i also of course, had…and still have…a lot of used nespresso pods. so i decided to make something for my girlfriends office. i kept it very simple. who doesn’t like their initials engraved, painted, or “podded” onto something? i created her initials out of pods with the background a bright color and the letters a deeper, darker color. i gotta go with colors i have available. and purple and yellow won today.
here is the outcome.
i found this cabinet door in an alley last month and it has been staring at me. so i finally made something out of it. it started off white. i painted it red and stenciled the mysterious face on there. and of course used some of the many used nespresso pods i have collected and have others collecting for me.
i don’t have a name for this piece. any suggestions?
there is something so fulfilling about taking someone elses trash and bringing it to life. it’s fun. and i never really know what the outcome will be. which makes it even more fun. i see a little bit of my personality in everything i create. i see a little further into my (dark) mind. it’s art therapy! and it’s free!
till next time my friends….
My niece, Taylor, recently had a 10th birthday. I was completely stumped on what I should get her, and in mentioning that to my girlfriend, she quickly responded…”make her some trashieART!” I was hesitant to do this because…..well…..I was concerned she wouldn’t be happy with it. After all, she is 10 yrs old, and does live in America, and has been raised in the world of overconsumption, too many presents, and a lot of waste. But, after some thought and discussion, I decided I needed to continue to put my efforts into practice. This was a great teaching opportunity. An opportunity to explain the science behind trashieART…the reason it was born. I shouldn’t be concerned about my nieces reaction. That defeats the purpose of my goal with trashieART. We need to teach the younger generations about over-consumption and waste. We need to show them ways to re-purpose and re-use. Teach them creativity in different, healthy, and environmentally friendlier ways. Encouragement. Mistakes. Practice. Love. Thought. Instruction. Explanation. Results. That’s teaching. Let’s do it. Now.
Side Note.….Here is my niece, bowling on her birthday…
I had to share a photo of her, the little bowling princess that she is…taylor is a big joy in my life.
okay… onto the trashieART I made for her. Taylor has a favorite animal. Unicorns. She has loved unicorns since before she could speak. So a Unicorn had to be incorporated into her gift.
What Is a Unicorn anyway? Where did this beautiful mythical creature come from?
UNICORN: A fabled creature usually represented as a horse with a single straight spiraled horn projecting from its forehead. They were commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin. In the encyclopedias its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. Until the 19th century, belief in unicorns was widespread among historians, alchemists, writers, poets, naturalists, physicians, and theologians.
Well, when I think of a unicorn, I think of rainbows and happy colors. Sooooooo, with a canvas, some file folders to make the stencils, paint and used (cleaned) nespresso pods, this is what I came up with for Taylor’s birthday present (pardon the bad photo-taken with a cell phone):
And to my surprise, she was EXTREMELY happy with the gift. She LOVED it. It was great because with this gift at her party, I was given the opportunity to explain to Taylor, her friends, and her parents and her step parents, what it is I was doing and why. They were very curious. And they really liked the whole idea of trashieART. Taylors dad has a Nespresso machine at his home just like mine, so I suggested to his wife, rather than throw the used pods away, they should clean them out and do art projects with Taylor. Both parents agreed this was a nice idea!
All in All, the trashieART for kids project went very well. I am pleased.
I encourage you all to pass this info onto any parents you know or if you are parents yourself, try doing some trashieART at home with your own kids. I would love to see what creative ideas you come up with. There are lots of things that you probably toss in the garbage, which can be used in some creative, artistic, and fun way. Way better than tossing the “stuff” in our already overfilled landfills. Just sayin…
Till next time…
