The Cat and the Collage

Charlotte and I love doing craft. Whether it's knitting a prehistoric world of dinosaur and cave men, to sewing skirts and soft toys, to handmade table mats, we'll have tried it at least once. Yesterday we tried a new branch of craft, one that we haven't really experimented in before: Collage.

A few years ago, probably for one of my birthdays, I was given a craft book on making tiny books. I fell in love with the idea. Unfortunately, my love of the idea didn't translate into a wish to actually make any, and so the book languished on the shelf, unused and unloved. Until yesterday.


We were bored. The normal things to do seemed so dull. Then, while we were flipping through some of our many craft books, we came across my neglected notebook making book. Flipping through the pages of this book filled my head with ideas.
"Let's make some," I said to Charlotte.

Her eyes lit up at once. Craft of any sort presents no problems to her. We scurried to and fro through the house, combing the shelves for things we could use. Old 'Better Homes and Gardens' magazines, card, curling ribbon, all these joined our stack.

Finally we sat down to work. I measured pages and Charlotte cut them out. Then we scanned the pages of the magazines for pictures of flowers that we could use to stick on our covers. We soon found heaps and heaps of pink flowers to cut out.

We worked for hours on these books, carefully cutting out many, many flowers and green leaves. Sometime during the cutting stage a little black paw appeared under the door. Poppy was knocking. I jumped out of my chair and opened the door for her. She sauntered in and jumped up onto the desk, sitting down right in the middle of our work.

Her orange eyes followed our every movement as we assembled our books. She watched me critically as I attempted to punch straight hols in the pages. She checked out the curling ribbon as we cut lengths of it to tie on.

Then finally we were done. Not a single flower more could be fitted on our books. The word 'Notes' was carefully stuck across the front in fancy writing. But before we could count ourselves as truly done, they had to pass Poppy's inspection. We held the books up for her and she sniffed them. Then she looked away. We could almost hear her say, "They'll do."

We really enjoyed making the notebooks. And making them has paved the way for other collage projects. What will me make next? Who knows?

Have you done any craft lately? Or ever? Please feel free to comment and tell me about it. I'd love to heard about your projects.