D Is For… Decoupage!
From Alterknits by Leigh Radford, photography by John Rizzo
One of my favorite knitting books is by Leigh Radford, called Alterknits: Imaginative Projects and Creativity Exercises. She has a ton of really great ideas. One of the last of them is the best use of yarn ball bands ever. She covered a dress form with them. I think the effect is surprising in its simple beauty.
Until I read her suggestions, I didn’t know what decoupage meant. There’s a whole artform out there surrounding it and you can get special glues and papers for it. Basically, it’s covering objects with glued paper, then applying something that gives it a high gloss. There’s a great tutorial at WikiHow and a bunch of other links that I didn’t take the time to delve into, but if you google “decoupage” you’ll find them.
What I find particularly exciting about this particular type of art is that you can use ephemera and found objects from around the house. This can create unique artwork that is also a snapshot in time – catalogs, magazines, newsletters, those circulars that come from big box stores each week – anything can become grist for the mill. In today’s day and age, finding art that we can make that’s in line with the idea of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is a positive thing.