(soft guitar music)
- I'm Margaret Nowak, and I'm an Art Therapist
and I work at the U of M Comprehensive Cancer Center,
and I provide art therapy services for patients
who are here at the Cancer Center.
What we're gonna do today is we're going to create
some collage greeting cards and these cards can be made
with a variety of materials.
Here's a couple of examples of cards that I've made.
This one has a button on it,
this one has a little charm on it.
You can see I've just used small pieces of paper,
which means that the paper you buy can go a really long way.
I have a wide range of supplies here
but you really don't need a lot
to make collage greeting cards.
For example, you can press leaves,
fall is a great time to do that,
put them in an old telephone book,
let them sit for a couple of months and dry out
and they make wonderful little collage pieces.
Here's an example of taking a leaf with a little photograph
of someone special and a matching piece of paper
for the back.
The types of supplies that you really need to have on hand
are blank greeting cards,
and you can get big value packs of these in a variety
of colors including black.
Sometimes black make really cool greeting cards,
particularly if you're using bright colors with them.
I have a wide range of handmade paper.
And you can buy packages of handmade paper, full sheets,
or you can buy smaller pieces,
but you can get a wide assortment
and spend a relatively small amount of money.
One of the things that I often keep handy is a color chart
that I pulled off of the internet.
Color wheels are helpful because they give you an idea
of what colors look well together.
For instance, colors that are across from each other
on the color wheel look really nicely.
This one has arrows,
it gives me ideas about triads of colors
that look well together.
Or colors that are side-by-side,
look also look really well together.
This is a quick-dry adhesive.
This is a tacky glue and this is a glue stick.
And the reason that I choose these glues
is because they don't have as much water in them
as a traditional Elmer's glue.
So they'll dry quicker and they will be less likely
to pucker your paper.
So if you can get a thicker glue or a quicker drying glue
or a glue stick,
you may find that those work better on your collages.
I also keep a list of words that I really think
are nice words for cards.
This is a card that has several different colors
and you can leave off this back orange color
and just attach this smaller piece on the front,
or you can attach the back orange to make the color
really pop out.
I added the word imagine on here from my sheet of words
that I have always on hand for when I'm making collages.
I've got a little maple leaf and a nice piece of paper,
and I'm gonna tear the edges of this paper
rather than cut it.
So you can tear things a couple of different ways,
you can lay it down and cut it like that.
You can use a ruler and this is ruler with a edge
that's all patterned so that when I tear the paper,
the edge is gonna have some shape to it,
which can be quite lovely.
The first piece that I would attach would be
this background piece.
And I'll just attach that here,
kind of right in the center.
Then my leaf that I pressed from the yard.
Can put that a little bit sideways
so that the whole leaf fits.
Then you can attach a photograph
if you have a special photograph you'd like to include.
And I'm going to put a silly party hat on this little guy.
There it is, it's just very simple.
And you can also include one of your words on here.
Because this is a playful card I'll take the word play.
And you can glue that right down here,
your message to someone to have fun.
These cards can be made
using a variety of different materials.
Nature materials like leaves are really wonderful.
Pieces of material, small pieces, large pieces,
pieces that are transparent,
different types of paper or buttons, little charms, beads,
string, many different things can be used
to create collage greeting cards.
I hope that you'll enjoy making your own because I know
that the people that you send them to
will really enjoy receiving them.
Thank you for watching.