Faith Hale I am an aggressively crafty person and love trying all sorts of different art forms but I realized recently that when embarking upon my favorite forms of art making – altered books, collage, and quilting – the starting process is exactly the same: I find material for low or no cost, cut it up, and then reassemble it. I’ve met plenty of people who are distinctly uncomfortable with taking an X-acto blade a book but for me, super-low-cost sourcing from places where the books are plentiful takes the sting out of it. Here are my favorite places for finding ephemera that I use for collaging.
If you feel especially anxious about cutting up perfectly good books, let me introduce you to the best psychological trick in my arsenal: the Goodwill Outlet, aka “the bins.” The stock rotates throughout the day and all items are bought in bulk, usually by the pound and if not, at super-cheap prices. Let me warn you that these stores are often messy, usually chaotic, and super over-stimulating. However, once the bins leave the floor, the items are often discarded. IN THE TRASH. So when I get a book from there, it feels like I’m rescuing it, instead of taking it from someone else who might read it.
Another excellent place I regularly source is small, independently-owned thrift stores. I’ve noticed prices going up in the big-name thrifts recently, like Second Ave. Thrift, Savers, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army, and some shoppers have ethical concerns about how these companies run their businesses. Shopping local is great way to support your community and to find interesting ephemera. I’m regularly raiding this shelf at the Blue Ox Thrift hosted by a church a few miles down the road, and four books for a dollar is a fantastic bargain, don’t you think? Some of these kinds of stores will have narrow windows of operation so check before you head over.
I’m wild about our local library for so many reasons but the free shelf is high up on my list. They’re in an outdoor space that’s accessible 24-hours and when I’m itching for inspiration – or fresh content to tear up – it’s my go-to spot. And while I take books fairly frequently, I do my part to keep these shelves full and donate books to the library when I can, knowing that some of them might make it onto these shelves. Heres my haul from this particular visit:
This library also happens to have a bin of old newspapers and I especially love the New York Times for both photography and interesting graphic design. If I’m lucky, I’ll even find the weekend magazine! One of my local coffee shops – shout out to Union Coffee! – has copies of newspapers for casual perusal and if I ask nicely, they’ll let me take them home once they’re out of date.
Perhaps the ultimate ephemera source is one you don’t even need to leave your house to get: I’m talking all things mail. Junk mail, catalogs, magazines, even bills (pro tip: collect security envelopes for interesting textures. Courtney Cerruti shows how to utilize these fabulous patterns in our Altered Book Daily Practice class!).
If you’ve been collaging for a long time, you likely have a “recipe” for essential elements of a good collage. For me, this looks like a book with nature elements (likely a book about animals, gardening, or space pics), something black and white and dry like a textbook, and something arty, which is usually a fashion magazine. But there’s something in my creative brain that says a collage really isn’t complete until it contains at least one element from – drumroll please – a vintage National Geographic magazine.
Again, I understand how cutting these up can make you feel anxious or antsy, and I don’t want that to be a part of your creative process! Source these when you find a big stacks of issues with duplicates, which feels low-harm to me, you know? If you’re ready to get cutting, I love Erin McClusky Wheeler’s Collage Homage class for both education and inspiration. My favorite type of collage uses found images, but she shows how your hand-painted papers can be put to masterful use in her 4 x 4 Studies Daily Practice class, which I can also enthusiastically recommend.
Regardless of where you source from, an especially meaningful part of regular sourcing is reflecting on the images you find yourself returning to, which can evolve into a signature. I loved taking Danielle Krysa’s Working With Collage class because it’s informative and she has a wonderfully thoughtful-but-easygoing vibe. What I took most from the class, though, is that she loves using pictures of the British Royal Family in her work. She and I met only once but now when I’m looking for source material and come across a book I know she’d like, I’m reminded of her and send a little hello across psychic time and space.