Collage Playground

Collage Playground: A Fresh Approach to Creating Mixed-Media Art
By Kimberly Santiago
Gifted by North Light Books
www.northlightshop.com
Reviewed by Melissa Conner
 

Making collages is maybe one of my favorite childhood memories. I remember going through old magazines and newspapers and clipping images, text, quotes, and phrases that were intriguing to me. If I didn’t use the clippings in my scrapbooks, I’d layer them onto my notebooks, book covers, and folders. Any school supply I could cover with paper and Mod Podge was bound to have a collage on it.

Since those days of spiral bound notebooks and Trapper Keepers, I can’t remember the last time I created a collage. It’s not that I thought it was childish, I just never had the motivation to get back into it…that is, not until I read Collage Playground: A Fresh Approach to Creating Mixed-Media Art.

Collage Playground, by Kimberly Santiago, takes a whimsical and playful approach to the method of collage art. In this colorful manual, you’ll find 25 projects and 10 simple crafting techniques to help you create your own unique art. Complete with step-by-step photos and easy to follow instructions, Collage Playground is a welcome reminder to how much fun collage crafting can be!

As a book worm myself, I loved Santiago’s “Altered Book Pages”. By simply tracing or layering images onto old book pages, you can create a beautiful piece of art that’s unlike anything you may find in stores.

That’s another thing I loved about Collage Playground. Nearly everything I needed to create my favorite projects was lying around my house. By incorporating elements like vintage textiles, pressed flowers, book pages, shape cut outs, and sticker pages with fabric and paper, you can make hundreds of craft projects that will quickly take you back to those days of simplicity…when all you needed was scissors, glue, and your mom’s unwanted Good Housekeeping magazines.

If you’re new to the collage medium, don’t worry! Collage Playground is the perfect book to welcome you to this art form. Not only do you get projects and techniques in this book, but Santiago includes tips for how to build up and use your very own collage clipping stash, as well as what craft supplies are needed to make awesome art. I was shocked at how many tools and resources I already had, without even knowing!

Collage Playground: A Fresh Approach to Creating Mixed-Media Art is a great book for crafters of all levels and mediums. From the notebook collages to the elaborate full-canvas collages, this book has it all. So pull those magazines out from the recycling bin and embrace the innocent desire to simply cut and paste.